And then I went to the bank. I tried to make a deposit in the ATM and it kept saying "Unauthorized Use" on my account. (Quick FYI to the banking systems: if anyone wants to make a deposit to my accounts, then it's fine with me. Authorize away!) So I went into the bank to see what was going on. Apparently, Visa noticed suspicious behavior on my account and deactivated my debit card. Bugger. Well, it's a mild inconvenience, but better than discovering thousands of dollars of fraudulent activity.
A couple of hours later I was at the grocery store. I'd forgotten about the loss of my debit card, so I tried to pay with my regular Visa instead. "Bad swipe," it said. Hmmmm... This card was issued by my bank, too. Methinks something afoul is afoot. Back at home, a quick call to the bank reveled the bad news. My online banking account had been compromised.
[Lightbulb. Okay, dim lightbulb.]
Ohhhhhhhhh. The weirdness on the computer, the slowness, the hacked account. It had to be a virus! (This is where my no swearing was going to be tested.) Mother puss bucket.
I forced an update and scan on McAfee and it found... nothing. Nothing?? Seriously? So I hit the interweb to do some research. The symptoms certainly sounded like this trojan, but the files didn't match. I thought something would turn up on a McAfee forum. Oh look! There was something! Loads and loads of people complaining about how McAfee is worthless and never finds things that free programs easily discover. It was around this time that I was beginning to see the light and agree with those forum posters.
So I grabbed AVG, Search & Destroy and Malwarebytes - all of which were free. In the first run, more than 70 threats were detected, one of which was Vundo, which is a nasty little trojan. (Thanks for nothing McAfee!!) I ran all three programs, rebooted, and ran them again. It still pulled up the Vundo trojan and a few other issues. Scrub the trojan, re-run, reboot, try again. Stupid Vundo - it's still there. Scrub the trojan, re-run, reboot, try again. Still there. This is getting old. Finally I found the trick online. Scrub the trojan, re-run, reboot without a network connection, try again. Success!!
So what have we learned? First and foremost, we learned that McAfee isn't worth a poop. Secondly, we found that resetting all bank accounts and debit cards and credit cards is a major pain. Take my advice and don't rely on McAfee (or Norton for that matter - they seem to be just as bad). Be proactive and run scans manually and regularly.
And make sure you have a bottle of vodka nearby.
Labels: misc
