Facebook Chat Virus:
- (La versione italiana la trovate qui)
Have you clicked a link in FaceBook chat and now your computer is infected?
Have you received a strange message with a link in FaceBook chat and you
don't know what is it? This is a good starting point to find more about.
How the virus works
Since December, there is a virus crawling through the FaceBook Chat:
a worm, to be more accurate
What is this virus?
Pretty easy: like almost all the infections you can get through a social network,
it is just a simple message you'll receive in FaceBook Chat. One of your
friend will send you this message, which is something like "foto :-)", "pic :)"
and a link to the photo itself. Presumably.
DON'T click it.
Whatever thing could happen, don't click that link. Never.
What to do, then? The first thing is "Don't panic". Until now, nothing bad
happened: you've only received a message with a potential virus, but the
virus is not in your computer, yet. Simply close that chat window and
everything will be fine. And DON'T click the link.
As a second step, I'd suggest you to write a message to your friend, the
one who sent you the link with the virus. It's not mandatory, but it's a nice
thing from you. DON'T copy the link in the message: just write "I got a
strange link from you" and explain what happened and everything will
be fine. If you got the link from his/her Facebook profile, this means
that your friend is already infected by that virus and now the virus itself
is trying to spread, without your friend ever notice it. If you inform him/her,
you'll surely do him/her a favour and you'll help avoiding that other
friends will be infected by the virus
Now, what happens if you click the link?
First of all, you made a really bad move. But well, it can happen.
Maybe you involuntarily clicked it, or you really trusted your friend,
who knows. It would be better to be more cautious in the Web, but
by now you did it. Time to find a solution. Let's see.
If you click the link, you'll be send to a fake FaceBook page,
which says that the picture you were looking for has been moved, for
whatever reason. If you want to see the picture, you must click on a button,
which looks exactly like a common FaceBook button, like the one
you usually click in order to activate an app. Have you clicked it?
Great! Now, your computer has just won a new virus.
Clicking on that fake button, you haven't activated any app and you
haven't seen any picture, since no picture ever existed! It was a trick,
made by the one who programmed the virus: a bait, in order to make
you click and install the virus in your computer. Maybe the virus has a
name, which looks like a real photo from FaceBook, but the truth is
that it's not a photo: it's an executable file, which will install itself in your
computer as soon as you click and accept.
This kind of virus is usually called "Worm": it is a virus often hidden in
a fake web page, which spreads itself through the Web, from a
computer to another. Those pages are clearly fake, but very similar
to an original page and they can deceive an inattentive user.
After infected your computer, this virus will keep working, trying to
spread through all of your contacts, using the same trick which
already worked with you: fake links and fake pages.
A worm virus works like this. Their name comes exactly from it: worm,
since they crawl from a computer to another, digging through fake pages.
How to remove it
You got yourselves infected. And now?
And now you must clean up your computer, in order to erase the
virus and bound the damages it already did.
First of all, you must scan you whole hard disk with a good and
updated antivirus. All the hard disk, folder after folder. You can
never be too cautious about it.
Usually this is not enough. You need a specific software, in order to
remove this kind of virus. There are many of them, as for example
Malwarebytes, which is also downloadable in a free version.
You can download it by clicking here.
Another mirror site to download it:
Download it, install it and scan all your computer with it, too: then,
follow the instructions. Next time, please be more careful and avoid
to blindly click any link you find.
One last thing, but very important.
Once you have removed the virus and your computer is clean,
change all of your passwords. Change the answers to the questions
for recovering your passwords. You can't be sure whether your
passwords have already been stolen or not, but it's better to play safe.
For sure, someone had a chance for putting his nose inside your
computer, potentially finding and copying all of your data stored
inside of it, passwords included. Maybe he did it, or maybe not,
but why should you risk?
Change your passwords and you'll be safer.
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