CORTLAND -- When Michelle Brown of Cortland got an instant message on Facebook from a friend telling her to click on a link to see a "shocking and embarassing" video of her, naturally Brown was concerned.
"I kept clicking away because I wanted to see what the shocking video was that had my name attached to it," she says.
When Brown clicked on the link, she was told that before she could see the video she needed to download an update to her Adobe Flash Player. Brown says she it seemed like a legitimate request but it was far from it.
"I was like, what on Earth could this possibly be? As soon as I hit that I knew I downloaded a virus because my computer went completely nuts," she says.
Brown had unwittingly infected her computer with a nasty virus, one that now had access to her Facebook friends and all of their friends. Brown says she has tried to contact Facebook to warn them of the threat but the company has not returned her calls.
"I tried to contact them but they did not call me back," she says.
Brown is trying to warn as many people as she can about the virus. She says there is a simple way Facebook users can protect themselves from it.
"If you get an instant message like this, just go directly to the site. If I had gone directly to the site I would of seen that it was bogus and I wouldn't of downloaded it," she says.
For more information on how to protect your computer from hackers check out these sites:
http://techchai.com/tag/facebook-virus
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=218675504827378
http://realtytechbytes.com/facebook-virus-prevention-tips
http://www.braincells4rent.com/?p=1264
Have you been the victim of a computer virus? What steps do you take to protect yourself online?
