2p2er Viruses me, o noes now what?

[ActionJeff]

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By a new HD and keep the old for evidence in case you need to press civil action against him.

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This is very amusing, the best post in OOT all weekend so far.

OP, why do you think the hand history DB gave you a virus? You said you scanned it before you used it.

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well, it seems like its way way more likely that it did than it didn't

I thought that spysweeper and Norton would automatically scan it when I downloaded but I could be mistaken. Because it was a backup/pokertracker file I didn't think there was a risk at the time, but after talking to a tech person they seem to think I almost certainly got the virus, spyware, and any keylogger that was installed from files imbedded in the download. I was unnerved when I opened my AIM client and instead of having my normal screenname typed it said "awesome" (no idea random). I ran the scans and the virus was detected as well as all the stuff spysweeper turned up. I deleted the backup file(titled "bldswttrs") but it was too late I guess. Considering that:

(1) I've never gotten a virus before
(2) I got a huge cluster of spy cookies and things that set off spybot at the same time
(3) I was sleeping during the period of time after I downloaded the file and wasn't active at my computer
(4) It was absolutely the latest file that I downloaded/accepted from anywhere within days. I had not downloaded any files or been to any sites where I could have gotten this virus and spy stuff otherwise in the past 10 hrs or so, which was around when I downloaded the file and only an hour or two after I ran scans with spysweeper and Norton.

It seems overwhelmingly likely that this problem stems from the file that I downloaded, linked to me by TheAudition. And obviously it was stupid to buy that database and download from a poster who isn't reputable and that I didn't know, but I was unwise to how these viruses and spyware work and didn't realize that such things could be imbedded in the backup file and wouldn't immediately be detected because I accepted it. Durrrrr me.

Anyone I'm having a professional look at the computer tommorow and reformat it, and it seems like my poker accounts and everything are ok.

-Jeff

edit- also I've gotten another Norton popup since the original post with the pic linked that has a different location, so possibly multiple viruses from this source