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Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody, welcome to tech Stuff. My name is
Speaker 1: Chris Polette. I'm an editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and sitting next to me as usual as
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, all right, then, so
Speaker 1: I I guess it's time for uh yeah, it's we're
Speaker 1: changing up things. It's time for listener may how Yeah,
Speaker 1: Usually we wait to the end to do this, but
Speaker 1: in this case we are our Our entire podcast episode
Speaker 1: is based off of the message we see from a listener.
Speaker 1: So let me read that really quickly. Hello, I've been
Speaker 1: a listener and I love the podcast. I have a question.
Speaker 1: I keep getting viruses on my computer Windows XP and
Speaker 1: I was wondering if changing my IP address will stop
Speaker 1: the attacks. I have my computer lockdown with trend Micro
Speaker 1: and Windows Defender, and everything will be fine until I
Speaker 1: randomly do a scan and it pulls off at least
Speaker 1: five viruses. But this is not every time I do
Speaker 1: a scan, just sometimes I do a scan every day.
Speaker 1: I was listening to an old podcast of yours where
Speaker 1: you talk about some program that makes it seem like
Speaker 1: your I P is different. It was how proxy servers work.
Speaker 1: Your help would be much appreciated. Alex from Arlington, Texas Well, Alex,
Speaker 1: We're here to to help you a little bit as
Speaker 1: much as we can at any rate. Uh, computer viruses
Speaker 1: are nasty, nasty customers, and uh it's never fun to
Speaker 1: find one on your machine. That's true. And UM, that's
Speaker 1: why we've decided to entitle this computer Virus Emergency Response
Speaker 1: Plan GO yes, because you have to figure out what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do in the event of a virus.
Speaker 1: You can't tell walk out and you know, walk out
Speaker 1: in the hallway and find that big red box with
Speaker 1: the in the event of a computer virus break glass, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do when they come for you?
Speaker 1: Is I think the question we should ask. I'm going
Speaker 1: to all right. So first thing, Alex, your first question
Speaker 1: about changing your IP address, I'm sorry, that's not gonna work. No, no, UM,
Speaker 1: you're looking at in that case you were talking about
Speaker 1: using a proxy server. Uh. The specific case we were
Speaker 1: talking about was you log into a server that would
Speaker 1: allow you to then browse the web through that server. Uh,
Speaker 1: so that if anyone were looking at at the you know,
Speaker 1: the traffic coming into that site, they would see it
Speaker 1: coming from the the proxy server you were using, not
Speaker 1: your own computer. So in that sense, it's really kind
Speaker 1: of misdirection. It's just telling someone, hey, I'm actually using
Speaker 1: this computer that happens to be in another country or whatever, UM,
Speaker 1: not my own computer at home. It's not going to
Speaker 1: help you if you have a virus on your computer.
Speaker 1: And that sounds that's what sounds like to me. It
Speaker 1: sounds to me that you have a virus on your
Speaker 1: computer that your scanner is not picking up. Um. And
Speaker 1: there are many viruses or variants of viruses, other kinds
Speaker 1: of malware that can download other malware like they're they're
Speaker 1: trojans you can get or viruses or whatever. That part
Speaker 1: of the thing that they do to your computer is
Speaker 1: they invite this other nasty stuff onto your computer without
Speaker 1: your knowledge. So that might be why you're getting this notification.
Speaker 1: It's picking up the other stuff that your virus is
Speaker 1: allowing onto your computer, but not the main culprit. That's true. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, unfortunately sad to say, Uh, in order for
Speaker 1: you to get a virus or a trojan horse or
Speaker 1: some kind of other malware on your you do you
Speaker 1: have to do some of the work yourself. Um that
Speaker 1: that doesn't you know, not to sound accusatory, because I
Speaker 1: certainly don't mean it to be that way. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the people who write this stuff have gotten a lot
Speaker 1: better at social engineering, which is basically convincing you that
Speaker 1: you're downloading something completely benign that will actually be useful
Speaker 1: to you, such as a plug in for a website
Speaker 1: to watch the special video or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: So even even anti virus or spywear software. Sure, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people have been tricked into
Speaker 1: doing that. They'll see a pop up from their browser
Speaker 1: window it says, hey, you know, we we've detected virus
Speaker 1: on your computer. Click here to download the free virus blocker,
Speaker 1: and uh it'll wipe it out. Well. In fact, you
Speaker 1: didn't have one, but you do now thanks to that
Speaker 1: that little installer that they put on there. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly, through some kind of weird happenstance, you
Speaker 1: seem to have gotten something on there. And even if
Speaker 1: you clean it off, um, and you keep ending up
Speaker 1: with new viru verses, there's some pop up somewhere that
Speaker 1: something's going on, and you may be inadvertently reinstalling new
Speaker 1: viruses on your machine, even uh, even if you did
Speaker 1: wipe the old one or the original one off, right.
Speaker 1: And so let's let's take a look at a couple
Speaker 1: of things that you need to take into consideration. First
Speaker 1: of all, you did mention that you're using Windows XP
Speaker 1: as your operating system. Make sure that you have the
Speaker 1: most recent service packs for Windows XP. Because one thing
Speaker 1: that a lot of these uh hackers are really we
Speaker 1: should call them crackers because it's a malicious hacker. Um.
Speaker 1: One thing that they're looking at when they're building these
Speaker 1: viruses and trojans and things like that, this other kind
Speaker 1: of malware. UM, they look at vulnerabilities that exist within
Speaker 1: operating systems to exploit those vulnerabilities. So you want to
Speaker 1: have the most up to date service packs because a
Speaker 1: lot of those have security patches that plug up these
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities as Microsoft discovers them. So someone sees something that
Speaker 1: can be exploited, they tell Microsoft. Microsoft says, oh K,
Speaker 1: we need to fix this, and they address it and
Speaker 1: then release a patch for you to download and install
Speaker 1: so that it it patches your system. You want to
Speaker 1: make sure you have the latest version of the service
Speaker 1: pack so that it is going to be the most secure. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's my first My first line of advice is
Speaker 1: to make sure you have that. Second of all, there
Speaker 1: are some viruses that are particularly tricky and will prevent
Speaker 1: you from downloading the most recent version of your anti
Speaker 1: UH anti virus software, so you want to you want
Speaker 1: to make sure you have the most up to date
Speaker 1: version of that as well. UM. If it looks like
Speaker 1: you're being prevented from accessing that, from uploading, up updating
Speaker 1: your database, essentially it is what it is. UH. If
Speaker 1: that's happening, then you know that you've got something hiding
Speaker 1: there that you need to find. UH. It may require
Speaker 1: that you uninstall that particular kind of anti virus and
Speaker 1: try something else. UM. I don't recommend that you use
Speaker 1: more than one kind of antivirus software on a computer
Speaker 1: at the same time, because it's very resource intensive, and
Speaker 1: they tend to make each other. I get all tangled
Speaker 1: up and they fall over each other. They don't work
Speaker 1: very well together. In other words, that's true. That's true. Um,
Speaker 1: And that sort of unless I'm jumping the gun here
Speaker 1: brings me to the point I wanted to make. Um,
Speaker 1: this may not be the best thing for you to
Speaker 1: do on the hard drive that's infected. You know, what
Speaker 1: you might need to do is use what I would
Speaker 1: put in that little glass box if I were actually
Speaker 1: making one, which would be an emergency response disc. Um.
Speaker 1: And basically this is something that that you might be
Speaker 1: able to use. You might actually have something that that
Speaker 1: does it. You said, Um, we're using a trend micro
Speaker 1: uh anti virus. Well, they actually have a disk that
Speaker 1: you can use. Um. They're one of several. Kaspersky is
Speaker 1: another one where you can build a rescue disc. And
Speaker 1: what this does is it allows you to boot your
Speaker 1: computer from the c D itself. Um, you might say,
Speaker 1: so what's the big deal. Well, if you're running off
Speaker 1: the CD rather than your hard drive, then your hard
Speaker 1: drive doesn't have control of your computer. The operating system
Speaker 1: loaded onto the CD does so it can actually scan, uh,
Speaker 1: it can actually scan your hard drive without any interference
Speaker 1: from that virus that's on your hard drive. So if
Speaker 1: you suspect that something is preventing you from updating your
Speaker 1: anti virus or updating your operating system to the latest
Speaker 1: service pack UM, it probably is a good idea to
Speaker 1: go ahead and build a rescue disk and and uh
Speaker 1: possibly even on a system that that you know is
Speaker 1: not infected UM, and then you can use it to
Speaker 1: boot your machine and and hopefully exterminate those viruses, because
Speaker 1: that those anti virus companies that help you build those
Speaker 1: rescue discs actually uh they build in some anti virus
Speaker 1: stuff in there, so it'll go through your computer and
Speaker 1: see what it can find and hopefully exterminate those viruses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always a good idea to to follow that. Another
Speaker 1: another way, you can kind of look into the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing as to uh to boot your computer
Speaker 1: and safe mode, which means that it doesn't actually initialize
Speaker 1: the Windows UM the Windows uh software operating systems. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the viruses are part of your Windows registry.
Speaker 1: If you're using a Windows machine, UM, that's part of
Speaker 1: how they kind of load themselves up when you boot
Speaker 1: your computer. Uh, the Windows Registry keeps up a full
Speaker 1: database of all the different programs and applications that need
Speaker 1: to to come online as soon as you turn your
Speaker 1: computer on. Um. And and it's a tricky thing. If
Speaker 1: you ever open up your Windows registry to look at it,
Speaker 1: there's often a ton of stuff on there, especially if
Speaker 1: you've ever deleted a program without actually uninstalling it first. Uh,
Speaker 1: stuff that can be you know, remnants of that stuff
Speaker 1: can be on your Windows registry forever. And it it
Speaker 1: gets really clunky and hard to navigate through that. And
Speaker 1: things don't necessarily have the names you would expect in
Speaker 1: the registry key so you could look at it all
Speaker 1: looks like a big jumbled gobbledegook. But um, if you can,
Speaker 1: if you can start your computer and safe mode and
Speaker 1: uh and run some anti virus software through safe mode,
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of websites that tell you
Speaker 1: how to do that. It all depends on which antivirus
Speaker 1: software you're using. That might also help because it won't
Speaker 1: allow the virus to disable whatever it is in that
Speaker 1: antivirus software that that's preventing it from finding the stuff
Speaker 1: in the first place. Now, um, let's say that Let's
Speaker 1: say that you're able to run the stuff and it
Speaker 1: finds a virus. Uh, what do you do? Then? It
Speaker 1: depends again on what software you're using. Most antivirus software
Speaker 1: has some sort of tool that will automatically remove the
Speaker 1: virus from your system, which means it will look for
Speaker 1: every single file that's associated with that virus and delete
Speaker 1: it or at least quarantine it. Um. So, Then and again,
Speaker 1: just because you track down a virus to a specific file,
Speaker 1: like a specific application, if you delete that application, it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that you've gotten rid of the virus.
Speaker 1: Because there are many many parts to some of these viruses.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll they'll spread files around in several different locations,
Speaker 1: so you need to make sure you get all of them. Um. So,
Speaker 1: one good thing to do is, if you run the
Speaker 1: antivirus software, you write down the name. If a virus
Speaker 1: pops up right down the name of that virus, uh,
Speaker 1: and make sure you link it to whichever antivirus software
Speaker 1: you're using, because some companies use different names for different viruses.
Speaker 1: You don't want to just assume that it's gonna be
Speaker 1: the same in every single one, although most tend to
Speaker 1: list the alternate names as well in their virus databases,
Speaker 1: so usually you can figure it out even if you're
Speaker 1: using if you're looking at a different database and the
Speaker 1: one supported by your antivirus software. So at that point
Speaker 1: you would need to go and look up this virus
Speaker 1: and see what all the names of all the different
Speaker 1: files that are associated with that particular virus, and then
Speaker 1: you would need to go and try and remove those
Speaker 1: files from your computer. Now, keep in mind if that
Speaker 1: involves going into your registry and you remove the wrong file,
Speaker 1: your computer might not work the way it was supposed to.
Speaker 1: So always back up your Windows registry file before you
Speaker 1: start making changes to it. You do not want to
Speaker 1: have the headache of turning on your computer and realizing, Oops,
Speaker 1: I deleted something that was apparently really important and I
Speaker 1: don't have a backup YEA, well really you should back
Speaker 1: up your hard drive regularly anyway. Yeah, well I was
Speaker 1: going to get to that when we're talking about preventive,
Speaker 1: but um yes, if you are not backing up your
Speaker 1: hard drive, please change that behavior as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: Um I, whether you're backing it up to a solid
Speaker 1: medium medium like a compact compact discs or um flash drives,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure it would take quite a few for
Speaker 1: most of us, or a an external hard drive is
Speaker 1: probably your best bet, and they're not that expensive, especially
Speaker 1: when you compare it to the the headache you would
Speaker 1: receive if you had to start from scratch. UM, invest
Speaker 1: in one of those. Do regular backups of your hard
Speaker 1: drive just in case if the absolute worst should happen,
Speaker 1: you might need to rely on it again. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean if you if you lost all the information on
Speaker 1: your hard drive, you know that your hard drive is
Speaker 1: essentially hosed, and you had files on that's a technical term.
Speaker 1: That is a technical term. Um, And you said, well,
Speaker 1: you know I've got files on here. I've got to
Speaker 1: have them. There are certain files on here that I
Speaker 1: know are on here, even though it's contaminated with virus. UM,
Speaker 1: I know I'm gonna have to reformat my hard drive
Speaker 1: or buy a new hard drive. UM. You might have
Speaker 1: to send it out to a data recovery service and
Speaker 1: talk about spendy UM. It's you know, these guys are
Speaker 1: like magicians. Honestly, they're they're amazing because they can pull
Speaker 1: stuff off of it that that you thought was long
Speaker 1: long gone, and they might be able to even identify
Speaker 1: what is infected and what isn't. Yeah. These these are
Speaker 1: the same guys that, uh that law enforcement agencies call
Speaker 1: on when they need to scour a bad guys computer
Speaker 1: and see if there's any evidence on it. These are
Speaker 1: people who you know they can look and look for
Speaker 1: traces for stuff that for on a hard drive that's
Speaker 1: been reformatted multiple times. I mean, it's it's pretty amazing
Speaker 1: damaged by fire shock, you know water. These guys do
Speaker 1: it right, you can, you can. You can bet that
Speaker 1: that they'll be able to do it. However, you'll be
Speaker 1: spending a whole lot of money for the privilege of
Speaker 1: having them recover your files and and check through them
Speaker 1: to make sure that they're okay, so you know, backing
Speaker 1: things up, you know, investing in in a storage solution
Speaker 1: and maybe a little software to back that stuff up
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. Um, we'll save you some serious
Speaker 1: headaches if you get a virus infection and have to
Speaker 1: restore to a previous version. Yeah. I've even seen external
Speaker 1: drives that had a simple button on it and all
Speaker 1: you have to do is press the button and it
Speaker 1: would automatically back up your system from that point, so
Speaker 1: all you have to do is remember to push a button.
Speaker 1: And now, of course there are external hard drives that
Speaker 1: have automatic software so that if you can't be bothered
Speaker 1: to push a button, it'll do it for you. And
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll be honest, there are things that
Speaker 1: I need to do on a regular basis that I
Speaker 1: forget about and then like three or four months will
Speaker 1: go by and I realize, oh, I need to do that,
Speaker 1: and uh so I'm one of those people who probably
Speaker 1: could use the automatic feature as opposed to, hey, you
Speaker 1: need to press push that button. It's been a while.
Speaker 1: It's a good Yes, it's it is a good thing.
Speaker 1: They they are, they're not laxing that I was going
Speaker 1: to mention. UM a utility that might be useful if
Speaker 1: you know there's a file, a specific file you need
Speaker 1: to get rid of, but your computer is not letting
Speaker 1: you get to it. Um, Like, as soon as it
Speaker 1: boots up, you can't even get into uh smart mode.
Speaker 1: I mean this does sometimes happen. Um. There's a utility
Speaker 1: called remove on reboot. And so let's let's say there's
Speaker 1: a file on your system and you know that this
Speaker 1: is a corrupt file and you have to get rid
Speaker 1: of it. But every time you're try and delete it,
Speaker 1: you're getting the message this file is currently in use.
Speaker 1: You can't delete it. Um, And no matter what programs
Speaker 1: you close out of, you're still getting that message. If
Speaker 1: you use the remove on reboot utility, you can designate
Speaker 1: that file as hey, this is a bad file deleted
Speaker 1: as soon as I start up my computer, and before
Speaker 1: it can even initialize, it will get booted. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a that's something for you to to keep
Speaker 1: in mind. If you have a problem with viruses and
Speaker 1: you do know the pro the the specific files that
Speaker 1: are a problem. Like we said before, don't go deleting
Speaker 1: things willy nilly. Don't don't reformat your hard drive just
Speaker 1: on a whim. You know, you try some other stuff first,
Speaker 1: because you could very well remove these viruses without that
Speaker 1: kind of headache. Yeah, proceed with caution. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: ditching everything is is not going to be the best
Speaker 1: use of your time. Even though it's gonna be faster
Speaker 1: up front, you'll still have to go back and rebuild stuff,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna lose a lot of information in the
Speaker 1: process too. Um. And you know it can be a
Speaker 1: learning experience if you can go in scientifically and eliminate
Speaker 1: stuff that you know you know is fine in an
Speaker 1: attempt to find them figure out what's what's wrong. You're
Speaker 1: gonna educate yourself about how to do this if you
Speaker 1: know it happens next time. Hopefully it won't. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's let's just kind of do a quick recap. Make
Speaker 1: sure your operating system is up to date. Make sure
Speaker 1: you're anti virus and or anti spywear software is up
Speaker 1: to date. Um, try and find one that that updates
Speaker 1: at least once a week. Most of them do, um
Speaker 1: and uh, and make sure you enable that function. Don't
Speaker 1: don't tell your firewall to block it, because that's very
Speaker 1: important that you stay up to date on that stuff.
Speaker 1: And uh, and just use some careful web surfing. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know policies. Don't open up weird attachments and emails,
Speaker 1: don't follow links blindly, don't answer pop up ads stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, these are just general rules of thumb that
Speaker 1: will make your web surfing experience much more pleasant in
Speaker 1: the long run. So, well, do you have anything to
Speaker 1: add to that? Well, Alex, I hope we answered your question.
Speaker 1: And I really hope you are able to take care
Speaker 1: of that problem. Um, but this does bring us to
Speaker 1: an interesting moment. Yeah, it's the second time for the show.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know what that means. Yeah, it's more
Speaker 1: listener me. Yeah, you thought that we weren't gonna do
Speaker 1: one at the end, but I fooled you, all right.
Speaker 1: So this one comes from our friend Ben over in Clinton.
Speaker 1: And uh. Ben writes to us and says, is the
Speaker 1: alarm sound at the beginning of listener mail the same
Speaker 1: sound used on M S T three K. That's Mystery
Speaker 1: Science fet or three thousand for those of you who
Speaker 1: are unfamiliar with it, to signal the start of a movie.
Speaker 1: Every time I hear it, I get the mental picture,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Thanks a lot, keep up
Speaker 1: the good work. Huh do you know what he means? Well?
Speaker 1: Why why we'll try another experiment, So for the third
Speaker 1: time today, Tyler, if you please, movie SI movie sig no. No,
Speaker 1: that's not saying it's not a little different all yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little different now. But thanks for writing then
Speaker 1: we appreciate it. And if any of you have anything
Speaker 1: you'd like to write to us, suggestions or corrections or
Speaker 1: you know, just general weird comments. Uh, maybe even a
Speaker 1: high ku, because I hear that Josh and Shock have
Speaker 1: stopped the high kus. So if you have to get
Speaker 1: your high kup on, why don't licks? I like limericks too,
Speaker 1: but they've moved on to limericks. Actually. You know what,
Speaker 1: if you want to write a Spencerian sonnet, you can
Speaker 1: do so and send it to text stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And I'm talking Spencerian, not Shakespearean,
Speaker 1: all right, so look that up so tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And remember we have blogs
Speaker 1: up and running and you can find those. Actually now
Speaker 1: you can find them straight from our home page, so
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Look on the right hand side.
Speaker 1: You'll see that there are some interesting blogs up there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's ours as well. And if you click on
Speaker 1: if you click on the button at the bottom, it
Speaker 1: will take you straight to the blog page and you
Speaker 1: can read all the different blogs. There's lots of really
Speaker 1: interesting ones. And remember you can read all about computer
Speaker 1: viruses and other software that goes bump in the night
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And we will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and
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