Photo by Kat Masback AKA kat m research
Yesterday morning the Real Food Media server was hacked. So for a couple of hours anyone loading my site in Internet Explorer got a bogus popup claiming their computer was infected and asking if they wanted to fix it. At that point, you weren’t infected. But if you clicked on “OK” … well, then you got infected.
I’m really sorry for anyone who came here and got a virus because of it. If you’ve never heard this before, let me say that again: If you get a random popup you don’t recognize when you load a page, you aren’t infected yet. It’s when you click on the popup that you get infected. The “warning” is fake. That’s how viruses work.
I know at least one person had this happen. I heard about it when she called to ask what was going on. Sorry, Mom. :-/
So … just to wrap a little good news around the bad, I’ve got 10 coupons available for anyone who wants to buy some of the OpenSky stuff from my store. Those are the items with the blue “Buy Now” buttons.
If you’re interested in 25% off anything under $100 from OpenSky, email me at coupon@cooklikeyourgrandmother.com and I’ll send you the coupon code.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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5 Comments
Better Protip: STOP using Internet Explorer. It’s like opening a hole in your house big enough a 18-wheeler can drive through when it comes to security and getting viruses.
Even BETTER PRO-TIP: STOP USING WINDOWS!!! (yes three exclamation points!!!)
Use OSX or Linux. Get thee hence away from Windows… Microsoft anything. in 1994/5 and again in 1999, they made some serious operating system design decisions based on cheating for speed rather than working with proper privilege separation like a proper operating system does and continues to.
What this means is that the USER can crash a system just as easily as an Administrator… its also means that they can be infected by people not knowing what they are doing or even ones that do know, if they aren’t extremely careful.
I’ve been using Linux as my primary desktop and now laptop Operating System for 10+ years… thank the Lard, (ha) I’ve never looked back to Windows. I have however started using OSX for the Wife’s and Daughter’s computers. (and my own “hackintosh”)
It funny as to really how BAD Windows is… but if all you’ve ever known is eating Dog Poo… how would you know any better? Try Linux and/or OSX… they will grow on you.
So, Chris, what do you recommend?
Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. Both are much better. I use Firefox with the Ad Block Plus and No Script plugins. Ad Block blocks all the annoying ads that you see on websites and no script prevents any scripts from running (which is the main way to trigger a virus). If you run No Script it takes a little getting used to and you have to grant access to the sites you know are good but in the end it’s worth the extra hassle.
Also always make sure that your virus definitions are up to date. I recommend Avast Anti-Virus for this protection. Their base package is free. It’ll have you put some info into the program to register but you don’t have to pay for it like Norton or McAfee and it doesn’t hog as many system resources. It will automatically update all of your virus definitions several times a day to keep you protected.
I work on computers for a living and clean more viruses off than I care to count. I’m in no way associated with any of the software I mentioned it’s just what I run on my machines and I’ve never had a virus.
I forgot to add that both Firefox and Chrome will block any popups on sites so you would never have seen the pop up that had the virus in this situation.