Some time around 2010 or so I found a FREE DOWNLOAD for some software I wanted on Youtube. Normally I wouldn’t fall for such a thing, but the video had a huge amount of likes and a basically no dislikes so I thought it was legit (I wasn’t well-acquainted with the concept of view bots). Ended up with some nasty malware, had to reinstall. Don’t run executables off youtube, kids.
Also there was a point before that I got ultra-paranoid about my computer having a virus, and I would Google processes in task manager and got super scared and installed some fake rogue antivirus from a ‘company’ called Uniblue. A lot of their ‘marketing’ was pretending they were part of Microsoft, and I thought it was super legit. It wasn’t. Turns out being paranoid about computer security when you are completely computer illiterate is a perfect way to get malware.
I regularly infect other peoples Laptops, and my own VMs as well, with a very common Spyware/Adware/Trojan. It comes in two different versions, the newer one being much more aggressive than the older one. It’s a ‘premium’ product costing up to $250 officially. The only way to really get rid of it is a full disk clean, otherwise it hides itself into separate, hidden partitions. It IS very annoying to install, considering it’s very slow, buggy and needs a terminal to circumvent the online account (even more tracking, technically, but I don’t want to create an account myself). And it even crashes all the time, takes ages to update and is a magnet for other viruses. I myself of course don’t have it, i use Linux after all. But most people seem to like Windows, for some reason, so I have to install it for them.
Pop ups in early to mid '00s
God, I remember how when I was like 8 years old I infected the home computer with a super annoying Adware.
I have no idea how it got in, if I was just hanging out on the Cartoon Network site playing games, but it happened, it was horrible. Every time I turned on the computer it played a video of a woman talking in a strange language and advertising something I don’t remember what it was. I think in the end they had to format the hard drive, that’s how insidious that shit was.
Another vaguely related event is when I supposedly messed up my mother’s first laptop by downloading music from Ares. I say “supposedly” because I doubt it was because of that, but because I was taking a bath while I was handling it. My mother loves to talk about it every time she hears the phrase “Computer Virus”.
I don’t think I’ve had any particularly bad ones. In fact I don’t remember having any since my age was in the single digits tbh. The only time I remember having malware was once when I tried to install iTunes on Windows for some reason, and I got infected with some kind of malware from trying to download this. I don’t remember what exactly it did—I think it was just adware that interacted with your browser, nothing too crazy. I think I may have done a fresh install or factory reset to get rid of it. I was really young at the time and I don’t recall getting malware since. I’ve definitely never (consciously) experienced malware on Linux, yet. (I say consciously cause for all I know maybe someone’s bugged me with a keylogger I’ve not detected idk. Hope not!)
Don’t remember how it happened but when I was a kid I got this virus on my laptop that would randomly open hundreds of Firefox tabs with this picture of Jeff the killer, with screaming audio at maximum volume and flashing black and white so fast it def would have killed an epileptic. Probably the most scared I’d ever been at that point. It also turned on my webcam light every time it happened, so somewhere on some filthy shut ins hard drive is a video of me at 12 years old throwing my laptop
