The Braviax Virus

This was one of those times where I'm proven wrong, and I feel like some faceless entity is laughing in my face. You know how you think of certain situations, let's say a bank robbery or getting cancer, and it always feels as if you could never have it happen to you? You feel like the odds are on your side. That kind of stuff always happens to the other guy. Not me. No, no, never ever me.

I've heard the precautions. I told myself to back my computer up "Just in case", but it wasn't very convenient. It wasn't easy enough. Well that's what I get for lazyiness.

Getting a computer virus was just one of those things that I thought I could avoid. I try not to click on any weird links or download excessively. I'm a good girl, honest. But just a few minutes ago I had to turn on a different computer to tell you all this, because my beloved laptop of two years caught the Braviax virus.

I was on a site I'm on all the time. Clicking on a link I often click on. And yet it seems it was here that dear old braviax found me, and installed itself into the tray at the bottom right part of my desktop.

The first symptoms were this: My annoyed internet security popped up with its usual annoying warning, asking me if I should allow access from a program. It called itself "braviax". The word not being familiar at all, I decided there was the slight chance that this was a virus. Probably overthinking it, but what the hay, I'd "deny" it for safety's sake.

It closed me out of Internet Explorer and when I tried to get back into IE, a gray window popped up telling me that I couldnt' get in because Windows was shutting down. But, I hadn't tried to shut it down. I waited a minute for the computer to shut down, and when it didn't, I tried getting into Firefox and then Word Processor. Same window.

I shut my computer down. It started itself back up. Okay...creepy.

That's when a window came up from the tray at teh lower left from a red circle icon with a white X in it. It looked like an icon to one of the security programs. The window said, and I quote:

" Your computer is infected! Windows has detected spyware infection!

Click here to protect your computer from spyware"

The misspellings and bad grammar were a dead giveaway.

I did a quick internet search (it started working again, but now my homepage had changed) and I found out some info. One sign of the infection is that it changes your homepage. And, if you click for te download, it downloads a lot more crapware and malware to further screw up your computer.

Great, huh? Instead of downloading the suggested remedies, as it would be just my luck to download some other virus, I shut my computer down for good. I'll take it to see a professional tomorrow or during the week, and hopefully my irreplaceable files won't need to be.

This has been your public service announcement for the day.