My ISP cut me off and told me to reformat my entire computer

They said I got a virus that is infecting other computers. WTF? how can they know that? fuck them they can suck my hairy butthole if they cant be any more specific than that.

 

But, you have a job.

 

Fuck that!!!! scan your computer with a few differant AV scanners, im assuming your computer has been getting used a "zombie" as they say to send viruses to other computers, no doubt your IP has been traced and reported to your ISP hence them cutting you of, these things are usually automated programmes that send out out thousands of viruses all over the place as soon as your online. It should be easy enough to find, unless its new and hasnt been included in your virus definitions database which i doubt, use a few differant scanners as sometimes one might pick something up that another might not, also i suggest you get a descent firewall put in place, COMMODO is descent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_computer

 

^ Yeah. If you don't have any money you want to invest, I recommend Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to start

Then, HijackThis, and post your log either here or on a dedicated forum (I don't know how much help I'll be if you're not running XP or below)

 

well, right now, im running from my other hard drive which has linux installed. It might be a windows thing.

 

did they at least refund your money for cutting you off?

 

Ive already written it off.

 

well your IP address most of stuck on to that virus's email (if you "were" spreading a virus with email.)

 

just to BRAG! am getting free internet from the laundry place where i dry my cloths....


they charge like 5 bucks an hour and am getting it for free!!

 

yeah, they said it was email, too. I don't write email. I don't read email unless It's a confirmation link from a website or a picture emailed from my cell phone.

that means its carri's fault. lol

so if they got my ip and knew it was mine, how come they didnt contact me? They just cut my shit off like someone who doesn't pay their bill.

even better than that, why haven't they got the IP of the computer that infected me in the first place?

 

This happened to me last summer. I was fucking pissed. I didn't need to format it, they just told me to get rid of the virus. If I were you I'd be pissed....

This almost made me piss myself laughing.

 

maybe once the virus recks your computer(did it?) and it emails its self to another email address in your email contacts list pool and then renews it Ip from the next victim and leaves the old virus with your computers Ip on it and renews itsself in its next victim.

 

Most likely scenario is that somewhere along the line you or someone downloaded a timed spam bot. It may have been sitting on your system for a long time, just not active. They can send e-mails to everyone in your address book completely without you knowing. Has anybody you know in your address book received any odd e-mails from your e-mail address?

I wouldn't put too trust much in what some person in customer service tells you, they are just reading shit out of binder and almost always say "reformat" as a solution to everything.

 

Most likely any of a hundred different kinds of malware ended up on your system and promptly added your machine to one of the hundreds of millions of other machines serving in botnets or otherwise acting as spam relays.
The traffic this generates (ie. email or packet spam) is easily detectable and will identify itself as from your IP (that's how the internet works).

(Much of the stuff I've read in this thread about emails and IP as a theory for how you got detected is basically wrong)

If you cannot clear the rubbish off your machine, you should indeed re-install or reformat.
If you can (and you've checked that you're not still zombiefied), than just tell them your computer is clean and get them to reconnect you.

Either way you should be sure to close up the hole that the malware got in through (either user error or software error), and keep a close eye on your computer's activity.


The ISP are doing the responsible thing here, in (temporarily) removing an infected and actively obnoxious node (your computer, through no deliberate fault of your own) from the global network.

 

I don't have a problem reinstalling windows, normally. It's just that it takes so long to back up my gigs of pics and videos and games, and then I gotta redownload all my favorite 3rd party software. even little shit like the modification I did to my adobe flash player. I had to change a line of code to make it to where It would stay full screen on one monitor while I worked on the other monitor. I don't remember exactly how to do that, so it would take a few minutes to finger that out again... alll these things are a lot of work.

 

I totally understand. I have been putting of doing the annual windows wipe/re-install for just those very same reasons.

 

are all the pictures on your computer being replaced with pictures of squid?

 

Colbert Report.