Lately I've been feeling paranoid about going on FB. Many months back a friend said her credit account was hacked into using FB, and since then I've been very wary of going on the FB site. I still go on there every day but only on my "internet computer." If I want to check my credit card account online, I close the FB window--dunno if that's gonna do any good.

Today I went to open some MS Word files from a USB device using my laptop. I was shocked that all the Word files had weird "square" symbols in place of the file names. I played it safe and didn't open any of my file on my laptop. I then plugged the USB to my internet computer and the files still have those weird squares. All the files are there but instead of showing the Word doc icon there is just a black paper icon with an unusually high KB numbers, and they can't be opened. I've no idea how that happened. It's a 512MB Imation USB that I have used strictly for six Word documents. The last time I used it was on the Internet computer. I did a scan using AVG and there is no virus detected. Can a USB just out of the blue corrupt your files?

I'm wondering if I got a virus on there, but then wouldn't it affect my computer as well?

I've had not issues with FB and viruses.

Me either and i am on FB multiple times every day.

These days a site as big as FB CAN'T be full of viruses or malware. It would be on te news.

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TXBill



Former owner of a few diesel MB cars
1998 Lexus ES 300 In Chicago We Trust

I use it to talk to family over in Australia and a few friends across the U.S. I have never had any problems. But, I don't play any of those weird games and other stuff they have on there. IE: Mafia Wars, Aquarium, etc... If I remember correctly, you have to give out quite a bit of your personal information to play some of those games. Maybe this was the cause? Or maybe the virus/malware came from somewhere else and they just happen to realize it while on FB one day?

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AJ

1985 300D (SOLD)

The privacy question of FB is a whole other matter (where was that video of Zynga's CEO bragging out how many people has has scammed through FB?) but security...

But as for virii/malware - one guy I know got hit once - not sure how the trojan(?) got in, but it started sending out video's/links to all of his friends. My wife was one of them (yeah, I need to regulate my wife's friends better =) she followed the link provided......(again, better wife control required =) ...with no ill effect. I assume that it pointed to an old site that used to harvest/infect/track its vistors. My local copies of Zone Alarm and Norton never went off so I assume the damage was limited to his machine only. He often FB"d from his iphone so that might have been the conduit.

And later that day. the infected friend FB'd everyone telling them not to click on links that 'he' had sent earlier that day. I had to laugh (because who knows all their FB friends email addresses =)

Not sure about the infected friend's surfing habits/hardware (He's a retired NIOSH PhD, 3 daughters and 2 grandsons...)

Arguably, FB is a java(?) platform, is run on LOTS of computers with LOTS of users, it must be some hacker's dream if they can get past the java(?) protective functions. No one that I know has CC#'s or bank accounts on FB, but the data harvesting **potential** is still huge.

synopsis - yes the stuff is out there, but check where a link is going before you click it and you'll be fine.

-John

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2009 Kia Sedona
2009 Honda Odyssey EX-L
12006 Jetta Pumpe Duse
(insert Mercedes here)

Husband, Father, sometimes friend =)

no problems with FB, although some folks have had emails sent out in their names that contain viruses.

Yeah, I don't do applications or play FB games. Btw, if someone sends you one of those iHugs or iHearts or whatever and you ignore it, will they know that you ignored them?

On the corrupted files in my USB, anyone know how that could have happened? It is a very limited use USB, only use it to open the files in them, do some editing and re-save. So it wasn't like I was downloading things onto it. Just so weird. Good thing the master copies of the files are on another computer.

Your credit card information just doesn't magically get stolen. Your friend most likely added her credit card to facebook so she could buy special gifts for friends. Why do people waste money on pointless things like that I don't know. She most likely had some other issues that she was completely unaware of.

With your USB drive, those aren't viruses. The files on the USB stick most likely became corrupted somehow. Simply format the memory stick by right clicking on the drive in "My Computer" and click format. Recopy the documents back on and you're golden.

In word documents, I have yet to come across a Macro style virus. If you're running Office 2003 or better I would not worry about such an attack.

Here is a simple trick to avoid getting infected by viruses. Do not open and download EXEs that you are unfamiliar with. That is how you get a virus 99 of the time. If you come accross an application that says you have viruses and you need to download this application to help DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT AND RUN IT. If you also can't close out the window CTRL+Alt+Delete out of the window.

Follow my instructions in the quote brackets below. I ran windows XP for almost 7 years and now Windows 7 without Antivirus software. I only use a firewall. I have never gotten a virus with this set up. For you however I would use Antivirus software just because you're not me

The best advice I can give you is to never use internet explorer. Period. My parents had some sort of odd fetish for it and would come whining to me when they had problems. I would get so annoyed with them that I decided to go corporate IT on them. This is my set up and it has served me well. Over the summer I deployed this set up over an entire school using group policy in Active Directory. I swapped the Firefox and internet explorer icons and so far the teachers and students can't even see the difference

Edit: Angel, your friend was a victim of a phising attack. Basically the link she clicked forwarded her to a website that looked like facebook but was not actually facebook. She logged into a website that looked like facebook that was completely outside of facebooks control. Once she did that the hacker had her log in credentials and was able to spam her friends. This happens quite often and it is easily fixed by changing ones password. This type of attack is also used on bank websites (BoA, Paypal, etc).

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-Typos courtesy of my mobile phone.

I would propose that almost all issues involving the internet wherein someone's computer gets owned, or sick or their ID gets stolen are due in large part to pilot error. I've been online continuously since 92, and never had a virus, malware or ID theft issue. It's not that hard to be safe, but most people are too lazy, naive or don't bother to become informed BEFORE jumping online. There is no driver's license required online, and the bad guys know it. Millions of people are easy pickin's.

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You're a daisy if you do.
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84 Euro 240D 4spd. 220.5k sold
04 Honda Element AWD
1985 F150 XLT 4x4, 351W with 270k miles, hay hauler
1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

I've been on FB for about 6 years now (holy schmoly...seems like yesterday), never had a problem with viruses or anything. As long as you don't blindly click on links, especially the ones that say something like "omg check out this picture of us!" you'll be fine. I have heard some "apps" can be a bit risky but again, just do a bit of looking into anything if you're inclined to have funny pictures of cats or farm games on your facebook...

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TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth