This morning i ordered big bag of Perlite and was told Ups would have it delivered to home in 3 days.
Great !

This afternoon i get an email from << client @ups.com >> a zip file and i download to folder and open it.
BAM -
my scanner says trogan so and so file was removed.
I then go back to folder and scan it and scanner say its clean, ok now im curious i know my scanner is decent so i dont worry and i open folder again
BAM - Same thing
my scanner says trogan so and so file was removed.
Its some sort of file wih exe in it.

So i looked it up here http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6655776

Sure enough its been going around.

Wierd that this happened the day i placed an order t5o be delivered by UPS ?

I know some of you members will or have been ordering plants and such .
Just be Careful if you get email from
    client @ups.com   with a parcel number in the subject line.

I was lucky and hope this may help others who may order fig plants or perlite etc etc for there hobby.

Martin --- Thanks for the caution advise.

Dieseler
Thanks for the info.
Viruses have been giving me as much problem for my computer as the squirrels for my figs. Both the squirrels and the virus originators need to be dealt with the same way you have been suggesting sometimes with a good bang.

You guys should try LINUX.  The software is totally free and you can have access to the web, texting, word processing and much much more and even run the software totally from CD or DVD.  No viruses at all!  Executables can not run on LINUX.  I am responding to this thread from my crustly old Thinkpad laptop running Mint Linux.  Cheers,

I appreciate the leaps and bounds that Linux has made - especially due to efforts of the Ubuntu crew.  But I still think that any OS you need to install - even thought it'll find most every driver - it still requires extensive configuration to do things such as play Flash videos, fully utilize your nVidia video card (installing proprietary drivers) and so forth ... it's not ready for mainstream consumption.

Any good antivirus app (anything that ISN'T Symantec/Norton or McAfee) is suitable to keep you mostly safe.  Avira Antivirus is one of the best free or pay scanners on the market as far as I'm concerned. 

If you're really worried about infections on your system, check out Malware Bytes anti-malware (free), Gmer (for rootkit detection) the two of them should ge a good enough job of verifying this thing didn't install a dropper/downloader on your system that will pull in other infectious stuff.

Points well noted Jason.  You know a little bit about computers!  That is good.   Linux has come a long way.  Like you said, you use to have to configure everything and know what you were doing if using Linux.  Nowadays, it not like that.  Today, all you have to do is pop the CD in and reboot your machine.  It  will automatically find and install everything for you....even if you run LINUX from CD it will do that, but run in memory.  Some people like that because your hard drive isn't exposed to the http://www....only a READ ONLY CD is and  you're totally protected.  And if you like the software, all you have to do is click on the install icon and the software will partition your hard drive and never touch your Windows data.  And install the LINUX data on a seperate partition.

Every 6 months, my son brings me his laptop from college and it is heavily in grossed in spyware and viruses.  I use my LINUX Live CD to go into his machine to clean up the viruses, spyware and cookies.  But I will say this, if you are going to surf the web using a windows PC, you bettter have a good virus software package installed.  I recommend MacAfee and Spybot.  Cheers,

I think one of the keys is fundamental knowledge of infections and how they happen.

A lot of people are ignorant - they don't know the three biggest entry points for drive-by malware, viruses and other infections on Windows systems are as follows:

- Idiot user that doesn't understand they MUST do Java updates
- Idiot user that doesn't understand they MUST do Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Flash updates
- Idiot user that doesn't understand they MUST have antivirus and it MUST be updated daily

I realize - after a decade and a half in the industry - that people naturally "hate" doing updates.  I understand that the top two items above are the main entry points of drive-by infections using any browser - Opera, Internet Explorer or Firefox (anyone who says it's browser-specific is a fanboi).  Sadly, updates are something people don't do because most apparently don't understand the risk of killing or ignoring that "update now" window, and it's their ultimate downfall (if they even realize when they get hacked/identity stolen).  If I could make people do the three updates above AND use a secure password - something else folks don't understand the concept of - e-thieves would have a hell of a time trying to hijack things.

Now, don't get me wrong - LiveCDs are great, I run linux from USB sticks on client computers to scan for infections.  I am senior admin on a hybrid (MacOS/Linux/Win) network and have been for years, so I've seen and worked with most of it.  I personally run Quad-boot on my personal laptop (MacOs 10.6/Ubuntu 10.4/WinXP/Win7-64).  Each OS has its advantange.  As much as I love Linux and MacOS, Windows dominates the world, so .... it's where the money is.  So, I've learned to secure it, for the sake of my household and the sake of my clients and LAN.

Hi Jason,

I'm one of those idiot users who doesn't understand jack!  We don't have a Mac.  I'm going to show your email to Mike and see if he knows to do those updates.

Whenever we turn off our computer, if there is an update symbol on the shut-down button, it will install, then shut down the computer afterwards.  Are those adequate updates when that happens?

We don't mind doing updates, if we know we need to do them.  We are very simple organisms--We have very limited contact with other people for our email and don't do a lot of business online--

We refuse to do banking online until the banks can tell us that it's truly safe. 
Now I hear that banks are going to charge almost 8 bucks for each paper bank statement they send to us, forcing people to go online whether they want to, or not!  I'm beginning to really hate banking people.  They use our money to make theirs, get bailouts at our expense, then smack us around by forcing us to do something we don't want to, to make it cheaper for them.  Thanks a whole lot!

Anyway, we want to be as protected as possible.  If we have any questions, my we ask you?  We won't be pests.

Thanks,

noss