Virus

I had my first encounter with a virus a couple of nights ago... I want to share my experience so that we can all learn from my lapse in judgement.

On Facebook, I got an email from a friend that had a link and an innocuous one line sentence saying that I should check out a video. The link was long but I clicked on it anyways. The link looked like YouTube. Above the video section, it said that I needed to download the newer version of Flash. I clicked the link and decided not to save it but run it instead. It is not one of the smarter moments in my life. I got an error saying that it could not download the newer version. I thought nothing of it at first but then, my computer started acting funny. On Facebook, the screen kept turning off. For example, while I was typing an email my cursor kept disappearing and the top of the screen would turn to a lighter colour like it was no longer the main screen being used. This is when I got worried so, I automatically disconnected my computer from the Internet. Michael looked at what was running on my computer and researched the funny looking items on the Internet. He discovered that I had downloaded a worm. This worm copies itself and automatically sends an email to the entire friends list in Facebook. He followed the directions on how to remove it and I changed my password on Facebook. We, then, ran an anti-virus software on the computer which took the rest of the evening.

Here are the three top things that we can all do to avoid getting a virus:
1. Use an updated anti-virus software
2. Don't download or run .exe files
3. Don't open any links that look suspicious or ask the person who sent the email if they sent it before opening the link or file.