Public Service Announcement

 

     I made mention of something yesterday among my many, many problems of late. Perhaps the most aggravating one was the virus to which I'd alluded. This is called "downloaditkeep", one of the most pernicious and stubborn viruses you'll ever see anywhere.

     Technically, it's not as harmful to your hard drive as, say, your classic Trojan virus but it can still lead you to attack sites. You'll know it by these signs:

     Your usually fast computer will suddenly start up slowly.

     Your desktop and even your operating system won't load.

     If you have Ad Block Plus as I do, it will bypass it virtually everywhere you go. Popup ads will suddenly start obscenely jiggling, sometimes you won't be able to block the images, much less the frames.

     Virtually every random word will be turned into a hyperlink leading you to a spam or attack site.

     Apparently, this piece of shit is as common as the dreaded Conficker virus I had a few years ago. I'd done simultaneous scans with Malwarebytes and Sophos Virus Removal Tool and it never finds it. I did a Norton scan today and it also did not find much less eradicate it.

     A lot of well-meaning but inevitably wrong nerds tell you to do the same thing: Open your Control Panel, go to "Programs and Features" and there your nemesis will be in plain sight, helpfully waiting to be uninstalled by you.

     No, it won't be there.

     Then a couple of hours ago, I went to a website and finally found a guy who knew what he was talking about. So what I'll do for you here is reproduce his instructions for removing Downloaditkeep from Mozilla Firefox, assuming you use that browser. Follow these instructions to the letter and they will work.

For Mozilla Firefox

1. Open Mozilla Firefox.
2. Then navigate on top menu and click on Tools. It will show a drop-down list. Choose Add-ons to open the configuration window.
3. Then click on Extensions. It will display the list of installed programs.
4. Find the Ads by DownloadItKeep extension. Click on the remove button to uninstall it.
5. To close the current window click on the X of Add-ons Manager tab.
6. Then go to the address bar, type about:config. Then click on ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’ if it show a warning “This might void your warranty!”.
7. Then type the infection name in the search box. It will show the items which are modified by the infection. Right click on the modified preference and click on Reset to restore the original settings.
8. Now you may close the window and restart the window.

      That should get rid of the problem. You won't have to risk downloading software from a third party or anything like that.

      Now let's get back to our regularly scheduled wingnuttery...