Facebook Virus

Question

Level 1

35 points

Facebook Virus

Hello All,

I opened what I thought was a facebook email reminder on my Hotmail account. My computer froze, so I had to hold down the power key to reset the computer.
I have come to find that this is some sort of "virus". Has anyone heard of such a virus and if so is there anything to worry about?
Also, is there any freeware virus protection/removal that anyone would recommend?

Thanks in advance,

Paul

Macbook5, 2; 4g Ram; 13", Mac OS X (10.6), First Mac, Various ipods

Posted on Jul 14, 2010 9:29 AM

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Answer 1

Jane Knox

Level 3

691 points

Jul 14, 2010 9:42 AM in response to bechard

http://www.clamxav.com/index.php?page=v2beta

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Answer 2

sig

Level 8

35,862 points

Jul 14, 2010 11:58 AM in response to bechard

"...I have come to find that this is some sort of "virus"...

And how did you come to find this?

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Answer 3

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,983 points

Jul 14, 2010 12:07 PM in response to bechard

I opened what I thought was a facebook email reminder on my Hotmail account. My computer froze, so I had to hold down the power key to reset the computer.

Sounds like you had a crash. Better investigate the cause of that.

I have come to find that this is some sort of "virus".

How did you do that?

Note that simply opening an e-mail cannot infect you with anything. Also note that there are no viruses for the Mac, and only a small handful of extremely rare trojans that require you to install them to do anything bad. See my [Mac Virus guide|http://www.reedcorner.net/thomas/guides/macvirus> for more information.

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Answer 4

bechard Author

Level 1

35 points

Jul 14, 2010 12:18 PM in response to sig

Hello sig,

Eventually, as a wall post on the senders facebook wall, and the obvious rare event (from my experience) of my Mac freezing.

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Answer 5

bechard Author

Level 1

35 points

Jul 14, 2010 12:38 PM in response to thomas_r.

I put the word: virus, in quotations to signify, what I thought was a catchall term for anything that negatively affected a computer.

Now that I think about it, I did click the link in the email to go to my facebook/messages section of my facebook account to which the link did just that.

So am I to understand, this event was likely due to a hardware malfunction. And if so, is there anywhere I can check this?

I am obviously not a computer expert, as can humorously be observed in some of my previous posts. I apologize.

Again thanks for all the input, hopefully I will become knowledgeable enough about the operation of a Mac, that I can save time in the future, for all the kind people who have increased my understanding of the Mac environment. I truly tell all the people I know, to get a Mac next computer!

Message was edited by: bechard

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Answer 6

WZZZ

Level 6

13,220 points

Jul 14, 2010 12:38 PM in response to bechard

I'm fairly certain it wasn't a virus, but hotmail is a pestilential place full of spammers. You might want to use another email service.

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Answer 7

varjak paw

Level 10

170,200 points

Jul 14, 2010 12:46 PM in response to bechard

Unless the problem reoccurs, it was probably just a one-time program error that crashed the app and Finder, not something chronic that needs to be fixed. If your computer is working correctly now, I'd say not to worry about it unless and until this problem crops up again.

Regards.

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Answer 8

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,983 points

Jul 14, 2010 1:05 PM in response to bechard

Now that I think about it, I did click the link in the email to go to my facebook/messages section of my facebook account to which the link did just that.

Be cautious clicking links in e-mail... if the e-mail isn't legit, it'll send you to a web page that looks like what you're expecting, as an attempt to get you to enter your login info.

So am I to understand, this event was likely due to a hardware malfunction. And if so, is there anywhere I can check this?

Probably not hardware, no. Could be that you ended up at a page with bad Flash content that crashed your machine. Could be that you have just had the first symptoms of some underlying problems with your machine. It's hard to say without more info, and it's probably hard to provide more info unless it happens again.

In the meantime, [repair the hard drive with Disk Utility|http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417] and make sure you've got a good set of backups.

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