Saturday, December 1, 2012

ALERT!!!! MALICIOUS SOFTWARE!!! "SNAP.DO"

Posted: 1 Dec 12


INDICATIONS ARE THAT THIS IS A VERY HARMFUL ONE which captures personal information, passwords, etc. and sends it to places it shouldn't be. 


A. PROBLEM: I just cleaned off this nasty piece of work and thought I should mention it to you and what I did, based on advice from the "Norton (leading security firm) Community." 

Item #1, below, gives you an idea of the dangers and Item #2 gives you the solution, which seems to not only fix the problem, but improves performance (at least in my case).

B. SYMPTOMS: Here's how it manifested for me: Whenever I clicked "new tab" in my browser (to create a new tab), instead of my usual page, I had a page called "Snap.do" in it's place, complete with a search box. 

Apparently, it came with a free download, yesterday. When I went behind the scenes to remove it, I found there was no way to make it go away for sure. Alarm bells. Investigation. More and worse alarm bells. Finally, a solution (whew!)

C. FIXING IT: For me, Item #2 not only appears to have fixed things -- everything seems to run even FAR, FAR faster than before -- even all my different browsers never loaded so fast before (I may start using them again). 

As far as I'm concerned, the magnificently elegant and blazingly fast anti-malicious software (French, but translation is available at the top of its web page) IS A KEEPER for future daunting threats.

D. SPECIAL PRECAUTION: Since it appears that all passwords have been compromised, I have begun changing mine -- I'll finish after posting this. Thought I should hurry this one to you.

GOOD LUCK!


#1 -- THE DANGERS -- ABOUT THIS BAD BOY-- the solution given here is quite technical, so I searched for a safer approach. So far, the solution in the paragraph #2 is as slick as ice.

http://guides.yoosecurity.com/manually-remove-snap-do-virus-completely-uninstall-snap-do-toolbar/


#2 -- THE SOLUTION I JUST USED -- WHICH ALSO PROVIDED PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS (probably cleaned off legacies of previous programs and infections) -- the report of deletions was HUGE, after this program had done its work on all my computers. 

The below link will take you to the Norton Community, which will link you to the heroic French anti-malware program:





All Original Content © 2012 , The MENTOR Enterprises / ELMS, All Rights Reserved -- BUT, I hereby suspend those rights, to this extent: You may freely copy and pass this along, if you think it will do some good -- as long as it's free of charge, unchanged, and you include this statement.

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