Virus, Trojan Outbreak

[Celebration]

The last month or so has been unbelieveable. I never, well, rarely, ever had viruses or trojans when the two computers were scanned. Now, it seems they are all over the place. I can't think of anything I am doing differently (??) Anyone else having this issue?

So far, no real damage done, thankfully.

[canetoad]

1. I haven't noticed any increase

in virus or trojan activity. Is there a dodgy website that you have started visiting, or a kid with an infected flash drive plugging it into your computer?

[Celebration]

2. no, I can't really think of anything--

I'll just keep running Spyware Doctor and Vipre all the time, I guess, and see if I can figure it out. Very annoying!

[Why Syzygy]

3. Have you installed

the latest updates for those utilities?

[Celebration]

4. definitely

They are now up to date!! I actually had to go into safe mode on my laptop because that one was out of date (Avast), and the computer kept going to porn sites and trying to make me buy bogus anti virus software. That is when I installed and ran Spyware Doctor, because the free stuff I tried wasn't working. Then I ran it in regular mode. That was about a week ago and I have had trojans since then!

Compared to other people here I am not very computer savvy, but was able to figure out what to do just from looking over past posts here. My laptop I don't use as much, but I have become much more vigilant with my main computer as well. The computer guy had installed Vipre there, but I think I like Spyware Doctor better.

[Cassandra]

5. Avast just screamed at me...

sirens and all, that there was a Trojan trying to attack me. I repelled it, apparently, but that siren scared the shit out of me. I was just poking around IMDB at the time.

[Why Syzygy]

6. Try this one

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

I've heard Spy Bot isn't as reliable as it once was. What anti virus program do you have?

[Jersey Devil]

7. Have you scanned your thumb/disk/external/cd/dvd drives?

If the same nasties keep appearing it may be that one of the files on a drive that you share between your computers is infected or a disk/dvd/cd that you are accessing over and over again.

Years ago I bought a new Leading Edge computer and believe it or not, it came with a virus pre-installed on the hard drive that got there because some idiot working at Leading Edge at the computer they used to install hard drives had been accessing a game on a floppy he brought to work with him that was infected. They sent me a copy of McAfee (which was available only on disk at the time) and I found the virus not only on my hard drive but on all the floppies I had used since I got the computer.

[madokie]

8. When I was installing linux mint 8 this morning

as it was going along at one point it was talking about the good things about mint and guess what they said. No need for antivirus, no need for anti spyware, no need for anti malware none what so ever. I like that. I turned the built in firewall on and feel as safe as I've felt on the computer.