Death to Trojans

No, not that kind of Trojan. I'm talking the computer virus kind of Trojan. I just spent the last two hours since arriving at my son's apartment in Austin for a leisurely visit with him, trying to remove a malicious spyware program that he unwittingly installed at school (UT-Austin) this morning. It's one of those programs that disguises itself as an anti-virus program. It pops up with a very official-looking "Windows" icon and a dire warning that your computer is infected with 48 viruses and spyware programs, then gives the user the option of two buttons: one says "ignore threats" and the other says "remove threats." Of course, when you push the one that says "remove threats," it actually installs the trojan on your computer. It's a tough one, too.

It took me forever to get it uninstalled. I finally got it off with Windows Defender - thank God for some of Vista's new features. This one turned out to be a life-saver. Beware!