Has anyone heard about a virus circulating MSN messenger in the past couple of days?

My daughter mentioned something about it to me. It seems when you log on, you get a an attachment sent from a friend... says something like "looks just like you". Anyway, she didn't accept it because her contact said it was a virus and not to open it.

Seems my fiancé was not so smart.

Anyway, with the stormy weather today we tried running Norton but we powered out. However, I think Norton caught it and fixed it before we lost power. We ran a scan and there was nothing there when full power was returned (but it was there before the power went out) but I am doing a full scan with Windows Defender just to be sure.

Geeks? ( I say that most affectionately and with the utmost respect ) Should I be doing anything else?

It sounds like you did what needed to be done. If your Norton virus definitions are up to date and you ran a full scan and then ran a spyware scan on top of that with Windows defender - you should be good. Just keep an eye out for weird behavior (like excessive pop ups or being directed to 3rd party websites randomly) and if something does crop up there are more complicated (and more effective) methods of detection that I can walk you though.

The Defender didn't catch anything either...but I was curious so I checked my Norton log and there was one item 'medium' risk that was detected but no action was taken so I went in and removed it.

Then some weird sh--tuff happened. My Spy Bot went crazy..but it does that when I'm downloading or running an app. like Norton. So I allowed the changes. Then Norton said I had to reboot to fully remove the risk.

No problem.

But instead of windows re-starting up, I got the blue screen saying they were scanning my C drive for consistency or something. I'm like WTF did I do????? I just let it go and took many calm and cleansing deep breaths. Please don't let me f----mess up my computer... please.

Then it went black for a few long seconds.

Then my Windows booted up.

PHEW

(it appears that this 'risk' changed some values in my start-up and Norton fixed it...and Windows just needed to verify it or something...at least that is what I surmise.)

Anyhow, it's good to know that Norton actually does work. When checking the log I see that it does stop intrusions and what not. I was always under the impression that it was just a waste of money and that they didn't really catch anything. I renewed my subscriptions every year anyway, but ... I thought I was getting bilked.

I have it set for automatic updates for latest virus definitions and weekly scans. The Defender scans daily.

But all this crap is why I don't use internet explorer or go on MSN messenger. People are always surprised when I tell them about mozilla firefox and why it's safer than IE. I'm really glad I was told about it...I think I've been using it since 2004 or 2005.

Thanks for replying Bacchus. you've eased my mind.

Not a problem Kath!