Virus Reassurances

A while back I got a virus on my computer, not sure where it came from. It was taken care of and my computer's fine now. Tonight, Mom checked out tvtropes and what looks like the same thing popped up on her computer. I doubt it came from here, but just to reassure the 'rents, has anyone gotten any viruses from tvtropes?

Nope.

No but what virus was it? I remember someone saying they got one of the fake antivirus software viruses from here and it turns out the virus got snuck into one of the servers for one of the advertisements here and that's how it got on their computer.

Sorry about that. I just can't get enough of those MIL Fs! Motherboards I'd love to fu—*shot*

No viruses on my end, no.

It is not from tropes itself but seems to possibly be coming from the ad server. There is a thread for something like this in the FAQ section.

There are no viruses on TV Tropes. You will never get a virus from TV Tropes itself.

That said, TV Tropes has no control over the ads that border the pages, which are hosted off-site by other companies, typically Google. It is possible to get a virus from a bad ad. For more information, see this thread.

That probably wasn't all that reassuring, was it? ^_^; But this is why, when browsing, you should always make sure your antivirus software is up-to-date.

edited 1st Jan '12 6:47:58 PM by BobbyG

Yep, it was a fake antivirus thing.

The FAQ thread is really helpful. Thanks!

edited 1st Jan '12 6:51:43 PM by ladyofprocrastination

You do know how to take care of that, right?

Yup, that's why I said it was taken care of.

I had the "Win 7 Security 2012" scareware get on my computer a while back, and suspected that a tvtropes ad was responsible. Fortunately my university provides all its students with top-notch antivirus software.

While we're on the subject of that, I remember I got that a couple of years ago and I don't remember how I got rid of it. For future reference, how do you get rid of it again?

IIRC, it involved running a system scan with my antivirus software to find the file the virus was hiding in (which ended up being a file called "ieh.exe"), then going into task manager and shutting down one or two processes associated with it to stop it from respawning after the antivirus deleted it.

I got the same one. My antivirus has figured out how to keep it in check but every time I think I've gotten rid of it the little bastard comes back. I'm not sure if it's from one of the ads here or not, though. I do seem to get the occasional alert by OTC...

Like I said, you have to shut down the process it uses to respawn itself. It's a somewhat tricky business: I killed windows twice trying (system restore is a wonderful thing).

Well, stopping the actual activation is simplistic. The problem is actually taking it off the system. I've taken it off only for it to reappear in a day or two.

Which either means I'm doing a shitty job of getting rid of it (unsurprising) or it's from one of the sites I go to at least semi-frequently.

@EG's post directly after my last one: Yeah, I think that's what I did too. Though if I recall correctly, I went into the folders and deleted it and any other suspect files/folders on my own, using AVG to clean to the rest.