Sorry but it has to be said...
My last 4 days...
Last Thursday - Old friend emails me and says "Hey, remember EQ? There is this Project1999 site that is doing private server, old school Ruins of Kunark and it's free." If you still have your disks, check it out because I'm gonna start playing again and I think you should too."
Last Thursday Night - Locate my disks after rummaging through boxes I packed up a decade and a half ago. Install using the instructions, but had to go to bed before I could get to play.
Last Friday Night - Get off work, spent some time with the GF then logged on and started leveling a Barbar Shammy. Original UI, original models. Hit like level 5, decided to do some research, hit up your site, found instructions on the newer UI and the newer models, decided I'd toy with that Saturday morning.
Last Saturday - Modified everything, started playing with the new UI and the newer models. Played most of the day, but right after I logged off, which was almost exactly 3am, my daily AV scans popped up saying that DSETUP.DLL was a trojan. This concerned me, checked out the forums, read this thread then, decided to uninstall from my main system, did so, then ran exhaustive checks with 3 different AV products and 2 different malware/adware products. Scan came up clean, decided to put it to bed for the evening...
Yesterday - Because the combination of the trojan hit, your advice to just have it ignore the threat, and the fact that I am a little cautious in general...I decided to take the precaution of pulling my other system out and installing it on that one. My other system is essentially an anonymous PC, there is no personal information on it, it has never browsed my email, never been to my social media sites, nada. Installed, modified for the newer UI and models, ran an AV scan and it hit the same DLL as a trojan but I wanted to check it out, so I logged in and started playing. Played for about 4 hours, in windowed mode...all of a sudden Chrome opens, is made default browser, redirects to malware site, download starts, install starts, POWER BUTTON, restart and rollback to prior to actually logging in. Started real time monitoring on AV and malware apps, started task manager, loaded game again and logged in to start playing. All was fine for about 2 hours, then, all of a sudden IE opens, is made default and browser redirect to another malware site, download and install starts, AV catches it and its stopped in its tracks. I kill the browser, reset default browser, clear history, clear cache and temp files, logged back in. About another 3-4 hours pass, and it happens again with Chrome...so what's the deal?
And please don't give your standard response of "If you don't like it, don't play."...because after this happening to me, honestly; it makes you look suspect. Love EQ, really want to play, love that you guys are doing what you are doing, but peace of mind and personal information security is more important to me than all of that. I'm asking you to address a legitimate concern of someone who has experienced the trojan aspect that you are telling people to dismiss and ignore.
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