Okay, I know I haven't been on in a while but I have been busy with DS (YAY, he now a Combat Medic) going to his graduation in San Antonio and then to come home and my brother having to go to hospital and ICU because he almost bled to death in a matter of hours. (something about an ulcer ...from his drinking....and it bursting and then bleeding)....to a computer virus. I have been battling a computer virus on two of my computers (one for business and one for playing on the forums, blogs, etc). I kept getting a popup saying I needed to update my flash player (did not say Adobe). Plus it made my search engine conduit.search which would not do a search at all....and couldn't get onto the internet unless I typed in "search.com" and then was able to search for help. I have a antivirus/anti malware program but the virus managed to bypass it. I spent two weeks trying everything under the sun to clear my computer. I figured I would work on one computer at a time. After two weeks of cleaning my computer and only to have the blasted pop up show up again, I finally did a factory reset. Turned the computer on and what shows up again.......the pop up. I was ready to throw my laptop away....but I still had my business one to clean up too. So I went to my craft room and decided to do a search on that computer. I rarely use the internet on that computer....I just take my files that I have worked on from my laptop and just plug in a flash drive and cut from that computer. So you would think no virus on the craft room computer, right? WRONG. First thing to pop up was the update my flash player. So this tells me that something else is going on. This is not something that I downloaded or opened and it infects my computer. Call the internet provider and voila.....modem/router is old and doesn't have some kind of security feature that prevents someone from changing my DNS. Don't ask me about DNS because I really don't understand all of it but is also has something to do with your ISP which is sort of like your "address" in the computer world. The internet provider mailed a new modem/router and voila!!!! no virus. Went and ran all the anti virus programs, etc. again just to make sure computers were clean. Then spent the next few days reloading software, etc.
So the last three weeks that I have been able to get on my computer, I have been pulling my hair out and bad mouthing my computers.
So what did I learn? I learned that a virus does not necessarily have to hit your computer but can come through the modem/router. So you are not 100% protected even if you have a good anti virus/spyware/malware program.