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Home » Computers And Internet Articles » My Wifes First And Hopefully Last Computer Virus

My Wife’s First (and Hopefully Last) Computer Virus

My wife came home from work the other day very upset. She works for a bank in the mortgage Department and they had given her a laptop for her use at work. Someone had sent her an e-mail that had an interesting sounding attachment, so she opened it. It wasn't long before things started to go wrong with her computer. Not only were there multiple pop-ups that were taking place all of the time but her computer had slowed to a crawl. It seems that there were so many viruses and spyware programs running on her computer that it simply could not keep up with the load. All of this happened because of one Trojan horse virus that was opened on her computer that allowed all of these other things to happen.

If it wasn't bad enough that she had the pop ups, they soon begin to become embarrassing. Not only were they trying to sell her things, but many of the pop-ups were simply obscene material and pornographic advertisements. This certainly did not look good coming across on her computer all of the time, especially when she was dealing with mortgage clients. She was practically in tears by the time she had come home to ask me if there was anything that I could do.

The first thing that I did was to try to identify what they pop-up windows were and where they were originating from. It turns out that the particular spyware program on her computer was of the "Trojan Horse" variety, and was actually one of the more difficult ones to remove. Not only that, but the virus had really taken over a lot of her computer. We both feared that there was some keystroke logging going on in the background. I needed to get this computer clean from the Trojan horse virus and get it cleaned quickly.

Because it was a computer that was associated with a bank I needed to get permission from their network guy to be able to log on to the internet from home. It turns out that most of the critical programs were actually run from a central server so there was not a problem with my doing that. I ran a free program called Hijack This and posted the results to one of the many technical forums on the internet. (I trusted this particular forum, so I did not have any real concerns about privacy.)

The technical forum gave me step-by-step instructions on how to clean the system from the Trojan horse virus and all of the spyware that it allowed to enter onto her computer. It took me several hours and I needed to go in and edit system files and the registry but I was finally able to win out over the virus and her computer was now clean.

It doesn't matter where an e-mail is coming from. It could come from your mother or someone else that you know and trust very much. If a Trojan horse virus is propagating on their system and sending itself out to others you will likely be a target of this virus as well. Never open anything that you are unsure of, and even if you are sure, run a virus scan on it first.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

The NUDE Model

Nothing to be very sassy about it. Nudity could be a very crowd pulling idea of marketing. But here NUDE is a new way of modeling a business and see the business environment in a new light called "NUDE" model. It is an acronym stand for

N = Novelty.
U = Utility.
D = Dependability.
E = Economy.

Take the case of fax machines we are so familiar with. But in early period of fax machine, this was novel idea. People ask a lot why anyone should sent data over a telephone line. Slowly but gradually it picked up and became an essential tool of any business. There it became a utility. It lost novelty.

If we study the growth of computer industry, ideas look utility to many and novel to a big part of crowd. It is hanging in between. Many people do not see any novelty into it and use it as they use there phone. According to Michael Dell, it is just matter of time computer and Internet would become an essential utility like telephone.

Same way dependability and economy hold opposite side of table. If something is dependable, it will not be accessible to common people. That means it is very expansive. But it is inexpensive, it will not be dependable. Again the computer industry is hanging out there. Most of dependable systems are not accessible to common folk. While inexpensive system are not that much reliable.

If we want to see NUDE model very successful we can see the ITC model of "e-chaupal" (a case study of Harvard business school) Idea is very rival. Giving the poor and no-so-rich farmers the same tools which are in the reach of rich man like computer access, internet access to solve the age old problem of gap is demand and supply. In an e- chaupal anyone could get the rates of grain in Mandi of New York and Japan sitting in far flung village of Madhya Pradesh, India. They can make their decision whether to sell or not. ITC provide common people a means to connect to the outer world which was earlier a dark and very cruel world for common people. The system holds all ingredient of NUDE model. It is a novel idea. It is using and selling utility and commodities like grain. The whole system is very stable and dependable. You can see the trust in villager's eyes. And in end the very much accessible to common men out there.

Any business idea of mass market should weigh itself against NUDE model. If you can answer all questions perfectly and deliver with economic profit, your business would a rare gem.