MSN weirdness?

[greenegg]

I hardly go on MSN anymore but when I do I get some offline messages saying things like:

"this person really looks like you!" followed by a downloadable thingy.

The thing is these come from my mates but they don't send them and it's happened a few times. Also it's differing friends each time. Sometimes there is a mail aswell in my Hotmail but when I open it it says it may be dangerous.

Does anybody else get this or know what it is?

[Phatmann]

I've had stuff like that a few times. I think it's a virus in your mates msn. Pretty sure Stella sent me a message similar to that a while back and has since sorted it out. As long as you don't download what they send you should be alright.

[Sweey]

The people it comes from has a virus. If you click the link, you'll have a virus too.

All MSN weirdness is a virus.

[greenegg]

Yeah I've never accepted it because it was out of the said mates nature. Just curious as to what it is or how to stop it. Pretty weird how Hotmail also says it could be dangerous when it's their service. Surely they can see what's going on :erm:

[Sweey]

Yeah I've never accepted it because it was out of the said mates nature. Just curious as to what it is or how to stop it. Pretty weird how Hotmail also says it could be dangerous when it's their service. Surely they can see what's going on :erm:

No. The message is outbound only and won't show up in their own conversation. Would be a pretty shit virus if it alerted the infected user to its presence. The MSN messages have nothing to do with the Hotmail service. Hotmail scans all emails for viruses and believes the email to be potentially harmless. Such security is not extended to Messenger which instead relies on your own computer's security. To be fair your "friends" have likely clicked on the link rather than been infected directly by the virus in its original form in the first place.

[greenegg]

No I meant MSN or Hotmail should realise.

I asked my mate if he knew he sent a link and he said no so I guessed it was a problem. Do you know what the virus can do?

Edit: I see Sweey. Rubbish bastards.

[Sweey]

No I meant MSN or Hotmail should realise.

I asked my mate if he knew he sent a link and he said no so I guessed it was a problem. Do you know what the virus can do?

Edit: I see Sweey. Rubbish bastards.

Plunder you with spyware/malware/viruses which can do all manner of things from degrading your PC to a bot (slowing it down and using it to send spam or attempt port scans), keyloggers to collect information such as credit card numbers and passwords and send them back to the "owner" of them or randomly delete files from your computer.

[Phatmann]

I actually had someone send me one of these messages about an hour ago. :mellow: From what I remember of people who have had similar viruses in the past, your mate needs to change his hotmail password. Not sure what more is needed, maybe search (or tell him to search) for the message that is being sent to you.

[greenegg]

Cool cheers for info. I won't accept it but also can't be arsed to warn my mate. :D

[Jonny2J]

My MSN seems to crash all of the time.

[Sweey]

Actually this would be a good place to say.....in both Vista and XP I get Firefox to ask me every time a site wants to save a cookie.

Obviously this can be a pain at the very start and does take a lot of thought, consideration and responsibility but you'd be surprised at how every single website tries to put some form of spyware, albeit not dangerous, on your computer via advertising which can always be exploited further down the line.

The drawback is that you can block a cookie you didn't want to, rendering a website you're trying to use completely inaccessible and you with the sometimes easy, sometimes extremely difficult task of finding out the origin of the cookie(s) you were supposed to accept and changing Firefox's instruction for them. That said, I haven't detected spyware in my Vista installation for over three months.

Something isn't working in XP, however, as one "virus" managed to get through (picked up during a virus scan when using Vista) and I found some spyware on my XP installation yesterday which I'd never heard of. Luckily for me I got the easily removable version of it and not the more dangerous one. All that means is that I've likely allowed cookies from a website I didn't mean to by accident and need to check the acceptance lists or that something else is lurking within my XP installation. Still, a safer way of browsing for anyone who can be arsed.

[Nifty1Pound50]

I don't go as far as you regarding cookies, I do however use Spybot's resident to alert me every time a program/process requests a change to the registry.

I find this sufficient, as have ongoing virus checks and regularly scan for spyware - although have not found anything in months!

[Sweey]

I don't go as far as you regarding cookies, I do however use Spybot's resident to alert me every time a program/process requests a change to the registry.

I find this sufficient, as have ongoing virus checks and regularly scan for spyware - although have not found anything in months!

I have SpyBot doing that too - think its the TeaTimer element - but I didn't like searching for spyware every day and finding between two and fourty items depending on how many websites I'd visited as it still reduces the security of my PC during the course of the day. If I were you I'd be concerned as to why you've found nothing for months :mellow:

[Nifty1Pound50]

I have SpyBot doing that too - think its the TeaTimer element - but I didn't like searching for spyware every day and finding between two and fourty items depending on how many websites I'd visited as it still reduces the security of my PC during the course of the day. If I were you I'd be concerned as to why you've found nothing for months :mellow:

My anti-virus software, as far as I know, has a spyware detection unit built in.

I have never suffered any apparent ill-effects of spyware on this PC, so I can only assume my machine is clean.

I don't use a great variety of websites, either, which I imagine helps a bit. :erm: