A Forum place to Warn of the Infected?

[mstfyd]

Originally posted by ukbobboy01

I would reply; check a number of threads in this forum, look at the number of people who have been scammed, look at the numerous amounts of (silly) questions being asked, you will find that there are a lot of naïve people out there &, yes, it is quite possible for someone to be infected & not know it.UK Bob [/B]

hmmm...I am sometimes silly & often way too naive for my own good, so I see the point you are making. I don't like witch hunts, which is why I mentioned the time frame. Those who have some sort of protection on their system have the file purged, & it isn't passed on. However, even petrie dish residue would be able to tell after a month on a virus/worm/malware diet that something is wrong with the computer. I just spent the greater part of an afternoon manually editing a registry so bloated with malware that free adaware was cringing in a corner. The owner called me because the computer nonstop requested internet access, & when she connected, all the nasty little buggers were pushing each other out of the way, trying to phone home. She isn't a tech goddess either, but it's hard to miss your computer freezing.

That's just things along the lines of bargain buddy, istbar, syslibie, mybar, turbo download, etc. No trojans like ByteVerify, W32.Tibick, Alwayup, W32.Alcra.A, all of which were caught either in mid download, or immediately after. True, the backdoor function of the trojans could go unnoticed if no one called them into play, but not one person in Mr or Ms petrie dish's address book noticed the odd emailing?

So now, we have this user, sharing the same infected files for long periods. His/her computer remains magically unaffected, & either those in the address book share the magic, or are as dumb as a box of rocks & don't notice odd emails from friends. Their guardian angels must look like roadkill.

Not everyone runs under the same blessings. My point was that those who appear regularly, offering the same infected files for a long time, but seeming to suffer no ill effects are more than simply leading a charmed life. The fact that it might be deliberate should not be disallowed, & there should be some way to warn. I did try the "chat/talk with host" option, but nothing happened. As long as there were forum suggestions, I thought this might be a good idea. Perhaps a time-delay for the posts to appear (in the meantime, a pm might be sent suggesting they clean up their act, or at least their files?). This would actually protect the naive & silly, & we would appreciate it ; )