Gonna be one of those days.

So, today, I get a call from one of my Dad's friends who is not at all computer literate.

He said he needed help with his computer, it was "acting funny." After getting some details, he told me the problems started right after he got an E Mail claiming that he had won some money in the Canadian lottery, and when he clicked on the link to claim it, it told him he had to d/l a "form" to fill out.

Instead, some software popped up & installed itself.

His told me he just figured that maybe the Canadian software wasn't working well with the American software....

He's calling back later.

Gonna be one of those days

Borg 386 said:

So, today, I get a call from one of my Dad's friends who is not at all computer literate.

He said he needed help with his computer, it was "acting funny." After getting some details, he told me the problems started right after he got an E Mail claiming that he had won some money in the Canadian lottery, and when he clicked on the link to claim it, it told him he had to d/l a "form" to fill out.

Instead, some software popped up & installed itself.

His told me he just figured that maybe the Canadian software wasn't working well with the American software....

He's calling back later.

Gonna be one of those days

Better get Malwarebytes ready!

I would do a boot scan with a usb stick,used
ESET SysRescue on my dads pc to get rid of the virus since it would go slow and would mess up if I tried to do anything due to the virus and this removed it for me,was a 2 trojans and a worm i believe. Then when i got control again i did a couple scans with other softwares and checked the services tabs and check the process tab to see if anything fishy was running.So it took me a while to clean it out,sorry if I went a bit off topic but i felt like sharing this.

Oh my. I'd say run a clean command at boot and start over.

This unfortunatly happens to many people which I really don't understand

How do you win a Contest you never entered and the fact it came from a Foriegn country should of been a red flag

No-one hands out money for free unless it is the State lotto which even that has limits

Malware bytes /Mse and Avast might do the trick if you can get them to install little buggers like that make it almost impossible to do functions on a pc

Fortunately, it was easier then I thought it would be. I got him to boot into safe mode & did a system restore 2 points back. He says it runs like it did before. Whatever it was, it wasn't that bad.

Thank heavens. we're talking about a guy in his 80's that just got the PC a year ago & knows nothing about computers. I had him d/l Malwarebytes & run it. All clear. I had him put MSE on the system too.

(When he booted into safe mode, he was totally amazed by the fact I knew/there was a "Hidden thing". I also had to explain that software is just that, doesn't matter if it's from Canada)

Yes Solarstarshines, I asked him if he ever entered the "Canadian Lottery" & he couldn't recall. He thought that maybe since he was online, he "automatically got entered". I warned him about scams like that.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of instances like that. In the past I've seen messages like that saying my ticket in some foreign country had won & they needed info to send me the cash. And, unfortunately, it's usually the older people that fall victim to those scams.