Sometimes it's easy to believe that every last thing online is going to eat into your PC, burn your house down, kill your cat and so on. The last few days I'd been hearing rumblings about some "Youtube rap video" and a file that would start hijacking your PC - well, thanks to a tipoff from a forum-goer at Spywarewarrior, I can hopefully put this one to rest.
In short, a video promoting a rap mix-tape supposedly took you to a file that "hijacked your PC with Spywarestop". In actual fact, there's no file to hijack you. Let's take a look - here's the Youtube page in question:
Click to Enlarge
As you can see, there's the mix-tape being advertised and a link to Mediafire, where the mix-tape is hosted. Click the Mediafire link, and all that happens is you'll see an advert for various antispyware tools - some of them on the Rogue Antispyware list, some of them not on the list but known to be of little worth to the end-user.
Click to Enlarge
In this particular case, it's an advert for Adware Alert. It's not hijacking you, or breaking things or making your browser fly around the screen, nor is it a "virus". It's just an (admittedly loud) advert. If you're running a browser compatible with Adblock Plus, all you'll see beneath the Mediafire logo is a blank space. Even if you're vaguely alarmed by the advert, all you have to do is click the "Continue to Mediafire.com" message at the top right of the screen (missing from the above screenshot as I cropped the image too small - whoops) and you'll be taken to the file you requested.
Like the title says - don't panic. This really isn't something to worry about too much. Even the most obnoxious rogue antispyware advert (the ones that do resize your browser, throw up endless popups and make annoying "Woop woop" noises) can usually be escaped by simply hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL and using Task Manage to close your browser session.
In short, a video promoting a rap mix-tape supposedly took you to a file that "hijacked your PC with Spywarestop". In actual fact, there's no file to hijack you. Let's take a look - here's the Youtube page in question:
Click to Enlarge
As you can see, there's the mix-tape being advertised and a link to Mediafire, where the mix-tape is hosted. Click the Mediafire link, and all that happens is you'll see an advert for various antispyware tools - some of them on the Rogue Antispyware list, some of them not on the list but known to be of little worth to the end-user.
Click to Enlarge
In this particular case, it's an advert for Adware Alert. It's not hijacking you, or breaking things or making your browser fly around the screen, nor is it a "virus". It's just an (admittedly loud) advert. If you're running a browser compatible with Adblock Plus, all you'll see beneath the Mediafire logo is a blank space. Even if you're vaguely alarmed by the advert, all you have to do is click the "Continue to Mediafire.com" message at the top right of the screen (missing from the above screenshot as I cropped the image too small - whoops) and you'll be taken to the file you requested.
Like the title says - don't panic. This really isn't something to worry about too much. Even the most obnoxious rogue antispyware advert (the ones that do resize your browser, throw up endless popups and make annoying "Woop woop" noises) can usually be escaped by simply hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL and using Task Manage to close your browser session.
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