You have no idea ...

… what went into getting the last blog published. Those of you paying attention will already have noticed that it was posted a day later than written – and why was that? I can’t quite believe it myself, but Jools – “the safest browser in the west” got a computer nasty – some pesky spy ware! It didn’t lock down my laptop or damage any system files, it just wouldn’t let me get on to the internet, IM or send and receive emails. As you can imagine I was lost! Not only that, it wouldn’t let any of the other computers on the network do any of that either!

My router very politely suggested I ran a virus scan – hadn’t done one for a wee while so I ran a Norton full system scan and it found 7 nasties lurking – identified as adware and with a theoretical promise the problem was fixable. I proceeded with the delete and repair procedure only to be told that 6 of the files couldn’t be deleted and that I should click on the link to find out how to manually delete them. So, I clicked on the link knowing full well that it was going to try and take me to some webpage somewhere for my instructions. “But the point is …” I’m crying at the computer screen “… I can’t get onto the internet!!!!” So I ran Ad-Aware instead which found 26 nasties – I actually run this once every couple of weeks anyway because it doesn’t matter how careful you are, you still end up with Cookie Tracking rubbish on your machine. I followed the Ad-Aware quarantine and delete procedure and Hey Presto! problem solved. Blog posted! Hurray for a lovely bit of “freeware” which did a better bloomin’ job than Norton for which I pay subscription – not that I really expected it to pick up spy ware in the first place, but its just once it had identified it, it would have been nice if it could something with it! So I just wanted everyone to know what a cracking job Ad-Aware does and that you should all head out to the Lavasoft site and get yourself a copy. Run it regularly, keep it up-to-date and to continue practising safe browsing.