"Cheshire Constabulary" virus/scam frightened the life out of me!!

[Desperate Daniella]

Hi everyone,

 

I thought I would post this in case it happens to anyone else on CAG.

 

Yesterday evening my daughter was going on about the "bearded lady" who was going to be on Eurovision so I googled Eurovision and went on to the Daily Mirror site. I was looking at the running order, saw a picture of the "bearded lady", clicked on it, and immediately a "Cheshire Constabulary" website appeared with a box telling me I had accessed child pornography and that my computer was locked, my files encrypted, I had committed a criminal offence and been reported. I couldn't believe it.

 

Over the website was a grey box with two options. I can't remember what the top one said, but the bottom one said, "Leave this page," so I clicked on that and it wouldn't leave the page at all.

 

I wasn't going to hit anything else so I just closed the computer down directly, waited few minutes, started it up again and it was fine, but I was still worried sick. I was half expecting the police to turn up at he door.

 

Actually it made no sense because my computer is protected against any nasty stuff including viruses but I was still absolutely shocked and logic had flown out the window.

 

Anyway I decided I would contact Cheshire Constabulary and as soon as I googled that I could see there were loads of postings about a virus or [problem] and from what I have read I think if I had clicked on the other option (whatever that was) I would have been asked for money to pay a "fine" in order to get the computer unlocked.

 

Obviously I would have realized at that point that it was a [problem] and not paid them, and thankfully there are instructions for removing the virus yourself available on the internet.

 

I thought I would just post this in case anyone else gets it coming up on their computer so you won't be as shocked as I was!

 

DD

[brassnecked]

DD Run Malwarbytes or your AV and scan your computer,. if it comes up clean don't worry. If you are really worried so long as you have the installation disks for all your software, reformat the hard drive and reinstall.

 

These virusencryption/ lockdown scrams are a problem, but if they lock the computer in Windows, you still might be able to reformat and reinstall so long as you can access the BIOS and set it to boot from CD or USB with a Live installer. Other options are a Live Linux distro that runs from CD/USB to access the drive and repartition it. OK you will lose any data you hadn't backed up, but so long as you have your install disks, you can get your computer back.

[sillygirl1]

This virus sometimes leaves a 'marker' in your startup files (I know because I've removed it from a few friends computers), so check your MSCONFIG setup to see it doesn't autoload on startup (you can clean up a lot of junk startup files from there).

[Desperate Daniella]

Thank you both for the advice.

 

My virus scan is showing that everything is clean and the computer is running fine, but I will double check everything.

 

I think because I just shut down it prevented damage. It was more the shock of it saying I'd downloaded child pornography which really frightened me. What a really horrible thing for it to come up with.

 

DD

[sillygirl1]

My friend got this when he clicked on a pick of his granddaughter by a swimming pool in Lanzarote sent by his daughter. The virus said he was viewing child porn and would be directly connected to the sender and when they were arrested he would be - so I think somebody connected to the word 'child' in the email which activated the virus. I did find a 'Childp' programme in his MSCONFIG files which I completely removed.

 

I made him a back up disc and he got the virus once again from another site (this time it was something adult he liked viewing) and cleared it himself - at 75 he was well chuffed he could do that!

 

I'm backing up my laptop to an external hard drive today as I am moving house (just in case), and when I am back online on Tuesday evening it will be via fibre-optic. Good opportunity to back everything up on the laptop and clear the nearly full 80gb hard drive. I have a 1 TB external drive to back up to.

[Desperate Daniella]

Thank you so much for the advice.

 

I don't view any adult stuff myself and no-one else does on my computer. I was just clicking on the page of the Daily Mirror. I am still stunned.

 

DD