Privacy, Security & Virus Information

Music Downloading: Be Wary of Computer Hackers

"I was afraid something like this would happen." 

It was very fortunate for Kathy Morris, a contractor for a major corporate training company who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, to have her telephone nearby one Saturday morning - she was lucky to have a McAfee technician only a phone call away. She had just logged onto the Internet using her daughter's computer and saw something she had never seen before. Instead of a normal home page, she was confronted with a warning page.

"Carrie uses Yahoo as her home page, but when I connected to the web I was redirected to a strange page telling me the computer was at serious risk for all these awful viruses," Kathy explained. "I was confused and nervous. We hadn't gotten around to installing McAfee on my daughter's computer yet, and in the back of my mind I was afraid something like this would happen."

Fortunately, Kathy uses McAfee Internet Security Suite on her computer because she understands how important it is to protect her business files. Her computer is protected from online threats, including viruses, identity theft, spyware, e-mail scams, hackers, and more. She didn't think installing McAfee virus protection on her daughter's computer would be that important. Kathy had neglected to install McAfee's eight-in-one security software.

"Since I use my computer for work, it's imperative that it stay protected-that's why I've used McAfee's products for years," she says. "I always follow safety recommendations for staying away from questionable sites, guarding my personal information, etc. But, I know my daughter is probably not as careful when using her PC."

Kathy found out that her daughter had been using the popular website MySpace.com to download music. Kathy understood that this was risky behavior for surfing the Internet - especially without the protection of McAfee. She called McAfee for technical support.

The helpful McAfee technician explained that her daughter might have accidentally downloaded a browser-hijacking program that piggybacked itself onto her computer. Once the hijacking program installed itself, problems began. These programs are designed to steal you personal information.

"I didn't quite know what to do without the technician's help," Kathy confessed. "I knew I shouldn't try to reset anything without talking to him since I didn't know what actions would lead to what consequences. I was thinking-if I just try to reset the browser page to get rid of the hijacker's page, will that cause some other part of the virus program to be activated?"

Kathy's first instructions were to immediately download McAfee Internet Security Suite for her daughter's computer. Once installed, it immediately started protecting her computer. It also immediately went to work arranging her system to guard against any new threats.

"McAfee also found other viruses, spyware, and adware on my daughter's computer, which it quickly removed," she said. "I had no idea her system was that compromised. I'm just so thankful I didn't use her computer earlier to email my work files or pay bills. Who knows what could have happened to my information on an unprotected system!"

Kathy now understands the importance of protecting her computer against future virus threats. Kathy explains that," My daughter's computer is working fine now and I know it could have been a lot worse," she explains. "Now that we're both protected with McAfee, I won't have another scary situation like this to deal with."

Interview conducted by Contos Dunne, Communications LLC, December 2006

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