Could This be a Virus or Malware?

Hi, I have been researching a new product to sell online, and found an informative post on a forum for sellers in this market. I visited the forum ONCE, two days ago. And I only looked at one thread, about pricing. I did not register at all. I was just browsing.

Today I got an email from a spammer (not picked up by Gmail's spam filter) trying to sell a product that is totally unrelated to the forum. But the thing that concerns me is; the email it is from, is in the following format:

(exact forum domain)@----.com

So at first I thought it looked like my personal details were collected when I visited the site.

Is this possible?

I knew about regular cookies, but not happy about my personal email being collected. What the hell else are they collecting?!

I don't know if I am being paranoid or naive!

And how can I avoid this happening in the future? (without anonymous browsing? - I looked into that once and it seemed a lot of trouble to go to).

Or does it mean I have a virus or malware?

Thanks a lot

thanks Paul,

I will try those

Hi,
Were you signed into the browser you were using ?
Did you use any share this or that to facebook.... using the site ?

Oops which browser ?

paul1149 said:

I suppose this could be the work of tracking cookies which at one point gathered your email address. I would do a thorough scan with a good AM such as Malwarebytes or even Panda. In a case like this I would also use a specialty scanner such as Spybot Search and Destroy. Also check browser addons, startup items, installed software.

Hi Paul,

I ran Malware Bytes and no malware was found but 9 other stuff which I got rid of.

I tried to download Spybot Search and Destroy and I got no download box. I got taken to this instead, and it's not clear what I click on next:
https://www.safer-networking.org/mirrors/
So which do I click on please? It drives me insane when you click a download button then they give you 20 options. As if I know what I'm doing!

thanks a lot



ThrashZone:

Hi,
Were you signed into the browser you were using ?
Did you use any share this or that to facebook.... using the site ?

Oops which browser ?

no I wasn't logged into the Firefox, and I didn't share the site to anywhere, thanks


.

paul1149 said:

That's the official spybot site, so any of those mirrors should be good. The ones on top, though, seem to have advertising you would have to navigate. The local ones in the middle group are ad-free. If you need help running spybot see if there are any youtube video tutorials or ask here.

Thanks Paul I found a tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UChxGe7Wsw

And I looked at this guy too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3u3akM9T94

Just did my first Malware scan on SBS&D and it took 32 minutes. Bloody hell! - 389 results!

Malware Bytes found 9! So does that mean MB is rubbish?

I will scan the files overnight in Spybot Search and Destroy, as apparently it takes a lot longer.

Thanks a lot for your help. Looks like I really needed it!

Spybot also finds tracking cookies...
MBAM only searches for malware = crap No

paul1149 said:

My guess is most of those 389 hits are pretty innocuous, but you never know. MB is the gold standard of AM progs, it's just that SB is stronger in a couple of particular areas, including cookies. I like Panda Free as an all-round AM, and with it you can turn off Defender, a real plus. Then i'll run MB manually on a monthly basis.

After you finish with SB, take a look at CCleaner. If you want to upload what it finds, see this post.

Yes, none were indicated as being a severe threat.

I wasn't able to scan my files using Scan Folder with SB S&D as I have 436,000 files on my C drive so it crashed! wasn't able to do a whole hard drive as only got free home version. So I will attempt to try smaller chunks again tonight.

Thanks for that.

Sadly I can't do more scans immediately, as I have a worse problem now; Windows Explorer keeps crashing. But I'll post that elsewhere.

Spybot also finds tracking cookies...
MBAM only searches for malware = crap No

thank you Thrashzone



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