The Pushy Trojan Horse

To be pushy is to stick your nose in or to elbow and shove your way into a location or situation where your presence is not necessarily considered to be desirable.  I hear "pushy" in New York often, but very rarely out here.

Last Saturday began my own experience with "pushy - on the Notebook of all places!  I kept getting these insistent ads (triple layer that kept me clicking the red "X" repeatedly) for "Live Security Platinum."  Nothing I did could get rid of them.

In disgust, I shut down for the night.  Next morning?  More of the same.  I should mention this infestation was occurring on the Notebook upstairs; the downstairs PC was unaffected, but it has quirks of its own -- I have to type something and print it out off-line before I can go online without seeing "Internet Explorer cannot display this Website." 

I called McAfee, my security provider and began a 4 1/2 hour trek through computer innards uncontrolled by me.  An hour around noon; then we had to go to the jazz club; work resumed at 5 p.m. and lasted until 8:30 p.m.  Remote control means you cede the power to a tech somewhere in the world.  Yesterday it was India, a previous time it was Bosnia. 

For quite awhile, I had "Paul" all by himself.  Then he handed off the Notebook to Vijay and the PC to Sandeep.  The Notebook screen to my left, the PC to my right, I felt like a flight controller or a space shuttle captain, but mostly like a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. 

They had control; I had nothing to do but sit and wait to answer questions they would ask me.  "I would like to (perform some action)" and, knowing nothing whatsever about what they were doing, I'd say, "Sure!" encouragingly. 

They were all very friendly and courteous and we chatted via IM.  Employees of iYogi, a subsidiary of McAfee, they all had good command of the English language in print and two of them only had traces of accents. 

My visit and subsequent clean-up and clean out of both computers cost me $330 for a year's service.  iYogi has six buttons at the top of the screen.  Press the green icon with the phone - you're speaking to a trouble shooter.  Click another and the server goes into automatic scan mode.   Customers are meant to do that once a month.

"Live Security Platinum" was a Trojan horse.  To avoid this sort of expensive invasion in the future, I'm going to write all of the people who routinely see something that they think I'll like and hit "Forward" without cleaning out the addresses of everyone else who has seen it. 

1.  You want to forward something to me?  Fine.  Hit Forword AND STOP! Do NOT put in my e-address.
2.  Use your cursor to highlight and delete all of the addresses of previous viewers.
3.  When you've done that, gotten rid of all of the other addresses, type my address in and hit "Send." 

NOT doing this is like having unprotected sex.  You know who you're with, but do you know his last three girlfriends and their ex-boyfriends?  No, you do not.  Don't send me "unprotected" mail.