Internet Scams, Trojans, Virus, Phishing, and Hackers.

**Poor Richard** · 05-01-2012

Internet Scams, Trojans, Virus, Phishing, and Hackers.

Our Internet is bright and shiny, and vermin are attracted to things bright and shiny.

Please feel free to post any info you run across on these subjects.

**Poor Richard** · 05-01-2012

Early Hackers

The story used to be that the evil hackers were Soviets in places like East Germany, but as details emerged the Hackers in East Germany were found to not be Germans, they were Jewish Communists. The Hackers there were actually tracked down by the East German Police, and arrested. Certain details were left out of the Media Mafia, for some reason.

Today, most public hacking attacks are scams for profit.

What sort of a creature would stoop so low?

**Poor Richard** · 05-01-2012

Lost Files Hack

One current hacking scam involves a virus that does no permanent damage, but is a Hacker Scam for profit.

First, messages are displayed informing you that the computer hard drive has very serious read/write errors, but the Virus will check your hard drive for free and give you an error report.

The virus then moves files and changes the status of those files to hidden, to make you believe that the hard drive has a serious problem. For a fee the virus informs you that a magic software program can resolve those serious issues, probably for about fifty bucks.

It is just a for profit scam.

I wonder why the Federal Government is “unable” to prosecute such individuals?

How to identify the Hack: A directory that was full of files will show empty, but if you check the properties of that directory, the properties will report the number of files and the storage space they are taking up on the hard drive.

Here are some links to explain and resolve such an attack:

Remove Smart HDD Virus? - Microsoft Answers

S.M.A.R.T check suddenly came up on my computer with waves of system - Microsoft Answers

Bleeping Computer Downloads: Unhide