I’m
going to tell you a little story about erotica. Now don’t panic, I’m not going
to get graphic. Actually what you are about to learn may come in very handy if
you’re on the net a lot or for business like I am.
If
you follow my blog you know that I download a lot of information for my marketing
strategies, my stories and for my blog. I’ve been doing this for several years
and never had any real problems and on the rare occasion that I did, I simply
killed the email address and opened a new one.
Easy
Peasy
BUT…
As I was putting together a blog post on erotica (it’s the best selling category
on kindle and is making some people a LOT OF MONEY) a warning popped up from a
anti-virus company I had never heard of informing me that my computer had
contracted a virus and I needed to buy their product to unlock it.
Nuts
to that. So I fired up my Avast
anti-virus software and set it to work!
6
hours later it finally tracks down the evil doer and flushed it out. So I went
back to work. The next day I start my computer and the virus is back! So I said
time for some real anti-virus software so I went to the store and bought Mcafee
Anti-virus. I figured I’d just pop the Disk in, fire it up and let Mcafee do
the work.
But
there IS NO DISK. After opened the box I discovered that in order to avail
myself of their anti-virus product I had to go on line and download it from
their site.
Simple
enough, except for one thing. The VIRUS WON”T ALLOW ME TO GO ONLINE! So I fired
up Avast one more time waited the 6 hours, then uploaded Mcafee once the virus
was again flushed.
I
figure problem solved. Mcafee is supposedly a very good anti virus software. So
the following day as I’m wrapping up my post on the popularity of erotica my
computer suddenly locks up and my screen is filled with this official government
looking announcement that informs me that the Department of Justice has locked
down my computer because I was supposedly viewing sites that had underage people
naked
AND…If
I didn’t submit a payment of $300.00 through Money Pac within 48 hours my
computer would be permanently shut down and I would be hauled off to jail.
Fortunately
I come from a law enforcement family and know that if I were involved in the
underage flesh trade, I couldn’t simply buy my way out by forking over $300.00
bucks from my paypal account. But I admit for a minute there I was stunned and
tried to figure out what site I could have gone to that would feature something
like that. So I quickly checked my browsing history and saw there wasn’t
anything even close. In fact the majority of my research focused on middle-age empty
nest couples getting into the swinging lifestyle and the unfortunate increase
of STDs for that age group.
Well my computer may have been
locked up but my smartphone wasn’t so I went to Google and typed in the first
line from the so-called department of Justice warning which reads : The work of
your computer has been suspended on the grounds of the violation of the law of
the United States. And Google showed me a full page of warnings and methods to
clear your computer. Here’s one of them:
http://malwaretips.com/blogs/department-of-justice-virus/
So
it turns out these scams are called ransom scams. Meaning you have to pay them
money to get your computer working again.
And
why the hell didn’t my Mcafee anti-virus software catch this!?
And
what sort of sick bastard would create such a program? Can you imagine the
panic some poor schmoe who’s surfing the net looking for pictures of hot women would
experience when he suddenly finds himself charged as a sexual predator? Or a
woman innocently looking for pictures of hot young studs having her computer
suddenly lock up and threaten her with jail time? And in both cases be too afraid to contact a
computer professional to fix their machine because they fear the computer pro
would report them to the police?
So
apparently there are soul-less predatory monsters out there.
As
for the sterling protection Mcafee provided I’ve found a program that actually
works and cleaned out my system in less than ten minutes. It’s called
hitman.pro and they let you have a 30 day free trial. So if you need real
anti-virus software that actually works, go with hitman.pro
