Monday January 7, 7:36 p.m.
Feeling somewhat exhausted right now. I went toe-to-toe with my first computer virus/malware in several years earlier this afternoon. Someone once coined the phrase "Evil is banal." Well, you couldn't get more evil than "System Progressive Protection". Somehow, somewhere....despite having all of my defenses up, I got smacked in between the eyes with this sudden outburst of a fake-looking screen scanning my computer and informing me that I've got tons of viruses and that I should be paying bucks for this fake anti-virus software. I didn't visit any weird sites or download anything, but then again, anytime I'm online, there is always a chance of getting hit with a virus.
And SPP is one truculent piece of malware. Its icon is a lock and it insinuated itself with the proverbial claws. It held fast, and every few minutes, it kept haranguing me with messages about these problems and that I should get the solution....all the while preventing me from accessing any of the other legit antiviral remedies in my hard drive, as well as Hotmail. Every other site I tried to access got me a page warning me about not accessing it before it let me through. Despite my annoyance, I read enough about how insidious SPP is and then checked out YouTube to see if I could find any remedies there. There were a lot of videos and they sounded useful but every time I tried to download the needed software, the malware stopped me at every turn until I found a Trojan Killer at one site and was able to get that past the guards and kill the entire process. Glad that I could do it by myself and am better protected now. I guess it's true what they say: whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
