winterbadger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterbadger) wrote2013-06-05 03:50 pm
winterbadger) wrote2013-06-05 03:50 pm
Entry tags:
my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Sunday
So, the other night, I was trying to remember a detail about my federal student aid submission. I tried logging into FAFSA.gov, but I had forgotten my PIN, not saved it anywhere, and locked myself out of my account by guessing too many times. Frustrating, as all I wanted was to check one detail.
Well, I could find the detail in the letter from UG that contained loan information. But they had sent me the information in a letter attached as an .xml file. (who the hell uses xml for letters? but I digress). At work I have MS Word, which can read .xml files. So I assumed that either OpenOffice or (at last resort) a browser could read it. It's just a markup language, right?
OpenOffice wouldn't cooperate. Firefox wouldn't cooperate. IE wouldn't cooperate. Chrome wouldn't cooperate. Several of them would display the xml *code* (which does me no good), but none would display the *result* of the code.
So I went online looking for an XML viewer. I found a few (not as many as I would have thought), but almost all of them, again, allowed me to view XML *code*, not its output.
I found one on C/Net that looked promising. I started to download it. It hung up and wouldn't download. I cancelled the download.
But not in time.
Back in the day, C/Net used to be a reliable source for reviews and shareware downloads. Apparently, it's now a site frequented by advertisers who attach their own special forms of malware to C/Net's downloads. I found this out the hard way.
Having canclled the download, I opened a Google search window to search again. Only I got a Bing search window with a very odd logo. I shut down the browser and tried again. Same thing. I did a quick virus scan. Nothing showed up. This was the point at which I learned another lesson: many forms of virus protection don't look for adware, only malware that is specifically written to damage your computer or hijack it.
After some more searching. I found this page, which lays out one method for getting rid of this specific, very persistent piece of malware. I had to follow all of its instructions, some of them several times, and finally (I think) rooted out the little bastard everywhere it had gotten into.
All this for a piece of informationt hat I thought would take me a few minutes to find. In the end, the search and its consequences cost me three hours. And that was starting at 11.30, when I was just about to go to bed.
So, from now on:
1. No downloading anything from C/Net.
2. Several malware programs are goign to be on standby, along with the virus protection. Belt and braces is better then just a belt. In particular, I had stopped using Spybot S&D because the maker of my AV system recommended doing so. But there seems to be no conflict caused by runnign both at once, so I'm goign to put that down to professional rivalry and ignore it.
Well, I could find the detail in the letter from UG that contained loan information. But they had sent me the information in a letter attached as an .xml file. (who the hell uses xml for letters? but I digress). At work I have MS Word, which can read .xml files. So I assumed that either OpenOffice or (at last resort) a browser could read it. It's just a markup language, right?
OpenOffice wouldn't cooperate. Firefox wouldn't cooperate. IE wouldn't cooperate. Chrome wouldn't cooperate. Several of them would display the xml *code* (which does me no good), but none would display the *result* of the code.
So I went online looking for an XML viewer. I found a few (not as many as I would have thought), but almost all of them, again, allowed me to view XML *code*, not its output.
I found one on C/Net that looked promising. I started to download it. It hung up and wouldn't download. I cancelled the download.
But not in time.
Back in the day, C/Net used to be a reliable source for reviews and shareware downloads. Apparently, it's now a site frequented by advertisers who attach their own special forms of malware to C/Net's downloads. I found this out the hard way.
Having canclled the download, I opened a Google search window to search again. Only I got a Bing search window with a very odd logo. I shut down the browser and tried again. Same thing. I did a quick virus scan. Nothing showed up. This was the point at which I learned another lesson: many forms of virus protection don't look for adware, only malware that is specifically written to damage your computer or hijack it.
After some more searching. I found this page, which lays out one method for getting rid of this specific, very persistent piece of malware. I had to follow all of its instructions, some of them several times, and finally (I think) rooted out the little bastard everywhere it had gotten into.
All this for a piece of informationt hat I thought would take me a few minutes to find. In the end, the search and its consequences cost me three hours. And that was starting at 11.30, when I was just about to go to bed.
So, from now on:
1. No downloading anything from C/Net.
2. Several malware programs are goign to be on standby, along with the virus protection. Belt and braces is better then just a belt. In particular, I had stopped using Spybot S&D because the maker of my AV system recommended doing so. But there seems to be no conflict caused by runnign both at once, so I'm goign to put that down to professional rivalry and ignore it.