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Careful if you're using TSR
Simposter
Posts: 306 New Member
Just wanted to give everyone that uses TSR a head's up. I was just browsing around over there looking at what other simmers have created and such. I don't have an account so I wasn't planning on downloading anything from there... I was just looking around. I clicked on a house that was uploaded there and had my computer taken over by a Trojan virus called "Antivirus System Pro". Generated annoying pop up messages every 30 seconds warning me that my computer was under attack and, of course, the only way to solve it was to buy their software to clean it up. Finding their software was made real easy too. They highjacked every webpage I tried to visit and redirected me back to their sales page. I found a way to remove it, but it took about two hours of my life, and gaming time away from me, so I just wanted to warn everyone else out there that may be visiting around. Be careful!
It's a shame some people find enjoyment messing with our computers like that.
It's a shame some people find enjoyment messing with our computers like that.
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Comments
Actually is was on my old computer though.
its like a site like this one.
I haven't browsed TSR since early Sims days, before they reverted to an 80% content requires payment. Back when it had a mall type feel.
I am going to agree with the poster that suggested an ad threw your virus in. TSR has a LOT of checks on its custom content. I am sorry you got the virus.
So obviously the owners there aren't that great either if they get mad if a member takes off his hundreds of downloadables.
XD
I love BTS and Ariana Grande.
I used to use TSR as my main source for TS2 Content and I NEVER had a problem with anything like that and to be honest, there for a while, I had let my AV proggy expire and I was a bad computer crash waiting for a place to happen! Don't be sure it is TSR...it could have been an ad or something that you picked up somewhere else.
Sorry you got zapped tho. From what I hear, that is a particularly nasty one.
So I seriously don't recommend downloading from there. And even if there weren't trojans, almost all the decent stuff on there are pay.
The Sims Resource
Maybe if you read over the first page you would of noticed someone asked that already and someone else explained. :roll:
I love BTS and Ariana Grande.
It's not so much that some people "find enjoyment messing with our computers"; they do this out of their love and devotion to their god. And just who or what is their god? Their god is the Almighty Dollar! That's right, some people infect our computers with these pieces of malware in order to make money! You see, the very *purpose* of that virus you got, which was a rogue security program, is to scam victims into paying the program's author!
And, as you've observed, most people these days are getting infected by malware via poisoned ads. A poisoned ad is a Web ad that has a script which tries to exploit a vulnerability (such as a browser vulnerability) in order to then download some malware to your machine. Because money is *such* a powerful motivator, we'll be seeing more and more of these poisoned ads on more and more Websites... until finally, one day, everybody will have had enough of these poisoned ads. On that day, Websites all over the Internet will go from being ad-supported to being subscription-supported :-( What this will mean is that, from then on, most Websites will have only TWO pages open to the non-paying public: the front page and the Subscription Sign-up Page. We would have to pay for the Internet on an a-la-carte basis! Just imagine having to pay one subscription for Mod the Sims, another subscription for TSR, still a another subscription for THIS site, yet another subscription for XM Sims, etc. This would get really expensive, really quickly. For example, if I frequently go to 10 Sims 3 Websites, and I have a $10 per month subscription for each, then I'd be paying $100 per month!
And rogue security programs aren't the only malware we can get from poisoned ads. We can also get the types of malware that turn our PC's into zombies and then force them to join "botnets". Look up the terms "zombie PC" and "botnet" on Google to find out what these mean. A botnet owner can make money by renting his botnet out to bad people who want to use it.
The lesson here is: whenever you browse through ad-laden Websites, such as TSR, turn your browser security settings up as high as possible. That way, your PC won't be so likely to fall victim to poisoned ads. Also, keep all of your third-party Internet software such as Adobe Flash and Adobe Acrobat up-to-date.
Yes, I wrote this post because of personal experience. On at least THREE separate occasions, poisoned ads have infected my computer, and all of this occurred between mid-January and April 1 of this year! I got my first poisoned-ad-related infection from an ad on the Star Wars Wikia site ("Wookieepedia"). This particular invasion was a rogue security program from the same family as the one that struck this thread's original poster. It was called "Antivirus Live", and it took me HOURS to get rid of this darn thing! Antivirus Live was preventing me from running *any* executable file! When I'd try to run an executable, I would get a dialog box reading: "Application cannot be executed. The file whatever.exe is infected. Do you want to activate your antivirus program now?". The second infection occurred on the Space Quest Wikia site, on February 7 of this year. This time, I was infected by another rogue security program; in this case it was "Vista Antispyware 2010". This nasty piece of work actually broke my computer's ability to run .exe files! I had to go into the Windows Registry to repair my PC's ability to run .exe files! The third infection happened on April 1, when I visited XM Sims. This time, it was one of those zombie-making pieces of malware that got me. Fortunately, I was able to remove that before anyone could co-opt my computer into a botnet!
-Malteselover