Why does an e-mail / website combination turn off my antivirus?

I received an email warning about a website where people's identification could be stolen.

The email went on to say that we can remove our names form this website as it

lists our birthdays by simply supplying a first and last name and you choose from a list

of results. My name wasn't listed but many of my family and friends' names were.

I did notice while the site was loading onto my screen, that my McAfee icon in the system

tray disappeared. I went into my virus scan system and it showed that my virus scan

was turned off (if it were ON, the icon would appear in the system tray in the lower

right side of my screen).

What would be the purpose of a website like this???

By selecting the privacy option, we could have our names removed from this database,

but what really is going on??? I don't trust this site.

What is your take on this?

--Mark Stelzer

[email protected]

This question was answered on January 16, 2003. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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The purpose of the site is probably to ream you royal.

Not knowing the actual name of the site, I can provide no specific details Therefore, much of the following is conjecture.

You have probably already been infected by whatever virus this website / email combination has set you up for Many virus attacks these days begin my turning off antivirus software.

It's harder and harder to uninfect a PC from many viruses In the case of the nimda virus, which has been called the worst virus in the world, advice is to totally wipe your hard drive and reinstall everything on your PC In the case of the worm/trojan virus I got on my PC, I responded by doing just that.

Your friends and relatives names probably got on that list from an invasion of the address book on one of their PC's My guess is that all the people with address book entries on your PC may have now been setup for the same treatment.

RG

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Posted by Robert of Mesa Community College on January 16, 2003

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