Hello,
Indigo_Moon here....can't log in as myself as I changed the email address in my acct to a non-existent one to stop all the damn posts from going to my regular email acct (that I set up with) but now it's all a mess.

So here's the scoop.

I've been friends with a guy I met through the Christian Personals for the past 2 months....just really good friends. We'd love to pursue a relationship...we're attracted to each other a lot on many different levels...but we live very far from one another and there just can't a future because of this (as I've got strong roots where I am and so does he). Anyway........he's been a bit distant lately, well...it's kind of sporadic. We spoke on the phone this past Thursday night (he called me) and we talked for 4 hrs. He told me he was going to fly up here to see me in March. He really wants to meet.

He can be like this...very "interested" and telling me he misses me, wishes things could be different for us........then he'll seem to "disappear" for several days.

Anyway, I confronted him on this hot/cold thing 3 days ago.......and again he ignored me for that many days......he then contacted me by email only after I'd sent him an e-card, apologizing for any misunderstanding, apologizing for me perhaps being sensitive and suggesting we just move past it.

Well as we were talking on Yahoo last night (he was on his webcam, too)....he suddenly got all insistent that I download this "Smiley" program..so that I could see this smiley he was trying to send me in chat. Now frankly, I couldn't give a sh*t about smilies but he was being such a pain about it that I went to the website he sent me the URL to, called Smiley Central, and stupidly I downloaded it. As it turns out, I didn't think it installed because I couldn't open it (something about corrupt code). He was strangely SO persistent that he then decided to email me the exe. file for this program. At that point I just didn't give a crap and forgot he'd emailed it.

Well this morning my computer is acting bonkers........to make a long story short, it's a fairly well known fact that when you download this "Smiley" program, you also are downloading a whole schwack of other crap.........pop-up blockers, mail stuff, some new search browser, etc. All morning I'm trying to work and I keep hearing this god-awful "buzzing" noise........sporadic. No window would pop up so I didn't know what it was. I kept updating and running my virus scan because I feared it was a virus. To make a long story short, toward the end of my workday, I noticed some weird icons on my browser...........lo and behold, this damn buzzing noise was from something called "Pop Swatter"........so everytime i'd been opening up a window (like in a chat program),it would consider it a pop-up and block it.

To make a long story short, I ran Spybot about 3 times and damn it, it will NOT get rid of the spyware/adware/crapware that came with d/l Smiley Central.......I've tried everything. So I went onto Google to see if this is a common problem...and what can be done about it, and wouldn't you know, this apparently has been a known problem since 2003.

Now my friend is a computer genius...it's what he does for a living. He writes code, you name it, he knows it. I wasted a sh*tload of time today trying to figure out why my browser was all screwed up..........trying to fix it all. I just can't see how he didn't KNOW this....................did he want me to have to deal with all this? Is this why he was so insistent that I d/l the damn smiley program?

I sent him an email a while ago ...calling him a goofball and telling him that thanks to him, I had to deal with all this............gave him a link to a site that explains all this.............and suggested he not encourage any other sucker to d/l this stupid program. He then msg'd me on yahoo.............I jokingly gave him crap again........he said he had just gotten home, hadn't read his email...............he then said he had his cousins over and couldn't chat but he'd help me sort this all out later. When I told him what a mess it's been all day, his response was "nice"...............

This is a decent guy, a good Christian guy (truly).............so I can't see him doing something like this intentionally..........but it all just strikes me as really odd..........and now after I've told him what a mess I've had today, trying in vain to remove this sh*t, he suddenly has company though he "just" got home from work..........and won't help me sort it out. I told him I'd figure it out on my own and I logged off..........okay, so I'm kind of p*ssed. Apparently AVG virus scan should have picked this up, from what I've read, but it didn't, even though I am meticulous about updating virus definitions and scanning (full).

Doesn't this sound fishy to you, too?

Sorry this is lengthy, I'm too exhausted to try and make it concise

[tattoomytoe]

well to stop the emails to going to your email, you can disable that feture in your user profile.

[Adunaphel]

I'd find it fishy too...perhaps it's his idea of a joke?

Yet he might have received the programme from someone(instead of downloading it), and he didn't know that if you download it directly from the website it comes with a lot of cr^p.

You will never know, unless he tells you.

I sent you a pm to your other account.

[GreenCap]

You should consult an expert coz it could be a download program where he can track your passwords etc to log in to your email etc. Don't want to scare you (good christian or not) but this is highly dubious.

[LucreziaBorgia]

It sounds malicious, but to his credit there are a lot of 'freebie' stuff out there nowadays that comes packages with huge glutting amounts of malware and spyware. You think you are getting something free, but you are getting a LOT more than you bargained for. You see it in smiley packages, screensaver packages, desktop theme packages, spyware (some companies are making 'spyware removers' which actually ADD spyware and malware), plugins, programs, you name it. If it is "free" and you don't recognize the site from where you download stuff, then caveat emptor...

The fact that he was so insistent makes it seem very suspicious though - given the content. His behavior toward you seems off in general, malware or not.

Hopefully your techie friend ran "HijackThis" for you and gutted that crap out of there. That is the only way with some of the stuff you described. I got my computer hijacked by Lop.com, which among other aliases, poses as 'Prosearching.com' - nothing, and I mean NOTHING could detect it, and I have AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy. I had a browser hijack, all my search stuff was hijacked - the whole nine yards. I finally had to learn how to use HijackThis to manually gut that parasitic crap off my machine.

[sylah]

I don't think that it was malicious. There is a lot of crap and some of this stuff gets installed on your machine as a service if you visit a site and you're using Internet Explorer and you happen to be logged into Windows with power user or administrator privileges. He might not have gotten it on his machine because his machine is set up so that he has no install privileges when he logs in.

Well I'm not saying he's responsible for all this crap, but I have a feeling that for some reason, he knew this would happen when I went to Smiley Central and downloaded, as he was so insistent that I do. He was making a huge, huge deal of it.......and this is a "no nonsense" kind of guy who never even uses smilies when we chat.........not ever. He's the kind of guy who would find them "stupid" (he's quite opinionated about things he finds to be senseless/unimportant).....so we sat here for 20 minutes with him growing increasingly impatient with me because I WAS trying to download it...but it kept saying "initializing" and the window didn't pop up for me to "save" it and install......he was inferring that I didn't know what I was doing and I assured him Im not dumbarse and I know how to download something..but it was not working. At the time I found his persistence and insistence to be annoying but figured there was some good reason he wanted me to see a particular smiley he'd tried typing in chat. It's all very odd. And when I told him what a bloody mess it made of my computer yesterday (I work from home and don't have time to deal with this mess, I use my computer to do ALL my work), his only response was "nice".......he didn't even seem surprised or concerned.

Then he said he had to go and would help me fix it all later.......and he logged off of Yahoo............but when I logged back in under my old Yahoo IM username, one he's not familiar with, it showed him online.................he's acting weird.

I didn't do anything with the email he sent to me, that contained the .exe file for this stupid thing.........so to the person who suggested he might be trying to hijack my browser/get my passwords, I didn't d/l it so I should be okay in that regard.

I've decided to blow him off because this is all way too strange and someone as sharp as he is when it comes to this stuff, he should have known.

[moimeme]

I think your 'good Christian' has a dark underside. It's just too wierd that he's sitting with you all but forcing you to open the stupid thing. He certainly should have known better if he's such a tech genius. I'm thinking you need to avoid this 'good Christian' because I think he'll be more likely to show you what living hell is like.