# 217 Viruses?! Or Scare Tactics?



## CplDevilDog (Mar 18, 2009)

Hi all,

just picked the Desktop PC up from The Geek Squad this morning and was told the Tech found 217 Viruses on it. It went to them after crashing during a BitDefender dat file update.

Now, I thought I was running BitDefender 2009(?) with an up-to-date dictionary file and MalwareBytes but the Tech said he found neither on the PC.

He listed a page of "Viruses" that were on the system but when I ran them through Google they all came back as Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware.

I run Vista behind a Linksys NAT router and thought I was keeping my BitDefender up to date.

Am I that naive and infected or is there some mis-communication?

The List of "Viruses" that were found and removed:

KAS (Which I assume is Kapersky)
Panda
Trend (Instances found = 0)
WSA
SpyDoc
A2 or A Squared

Signed: Cruising the Internet with my fly unzipped. (Metaphorically speaking)


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## Jay 78 (Mar 2, 2011)

CplDevilDog said:


> the Tech found 217 Viruses on it.


Total BS.


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## Ironlight (Apr 13, 2011)

They probably ran a virus checking on it and it listed 217 suspicious files. That could be anything from something serious, like trojans and password loggers, to things that are relatively benign like tracking cookies. In all likelihood all of those hits were cookies and associated files.

The best defense against infection is just some good practices. Most people are aware by now that your computer can be infected just by visiting the wrong website, depending on what vulnerabilities there currently are open in things like java and the browser itself.

Whatever you do, if you come to a website that starts thowing up pop up windows, do NOT click on ANYTHING in a browser window or dialog no matter how harmless it may look. A button that says "Close this Window" may in fact be a button that installs malware on your computer. It's just labeled deceptively. In these situations, hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and force quit the browser without clicking anything in the application itself. These "fake message" sites are how 99% of malware gets on computers.

Browsers that have extensions, like Firefox, have some useful security add-ons, like Web of Trust (WOT) that warns you about bad websites BEFORE the browser actually opens the page. Extremely useful, and reliable extension that works through crowd sourcing.


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## poppameth (Oct 2, 2008)

Sounds to me like whatever scanner he used flagged some of the definition files from your other AV software as viruses, which is common. I wouldn't be overly concerned with it. Don't ever take anything to Geek Squad.


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## CplDevilDog (Mar 18, 2009)

poppameth said:


> Don't ever take anything to Geek Squad.


I wonder how long it will be before some _real_ cyber-criminal convinces one of these poor $6.75 an hour wage slaves to start installing something_ really_ dangerous on people's PC's


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## rossfingal (Mar 20, 2011)

What "Ironlight" says!!
If you find yourself on a site/web-page that you cannot get off of -
That somehow, seems suspicious -
Don't click on anything -
Not "Close" - not a "X" - not "No" - not anything.
Try to use "Task Manager" to shut it down.
If that doesn't work - shut your computer off!
Reboot and run Anti-Malware scans.
If you have more than one "Anti-Virus" - "Anti-Malware" scanner -
Running "Live" - you'll get conflicts!
Just being on the Internet means -
You can be "attacked"! 

rossfingal

(Yeah - they make money off of this!)
If you hit the "X" to close your browser - and, it doesn't work -
That's a "Bad Sign"!!


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## whiskers (Apr 16, 2011)

Ironlight said:


> They probably ran a virus checking on it and it listed 217 suspicious files. That could be anything from something serious, like trojans and password loggers, to things that are relatively benign like tracking cookies. In all likelihood all of those hits were cookies and associated files.


This. Most likely those 'viruses' were just tracking cookies - completely benign, but may be worrisome if you're paranoid about your privacy.

I'd say don't deal with GeekSquad. Usually, it is very unlikely that you'll pick up a virus if you use a NAT router and a more-or-less secure browser such as Chrome or Firefox. Never click on suspicious links in emails from people you don't know and don't open suspicious attachments.


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## bbo (Feb 28, 2010)

CplDevilDog said:


> I wonder how long it will be before some _real_ cyber-criminal convinces one of these poor $6.75 an hour wage slaves to start installing something_ really_ dangerous on people's PC's


it all starts with bloatware. I now avoid any purchases of preinstalled OS with bloatware. I much prefer a cleaninstall of an OS withnothing added on.

I'd find out what program they used to do this scan.


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