Quote:
Originally Posted by Seaweedpimp
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Im really terrible with computers, didnt want to say it but i dont even use virus protection, whenever something goes bad i just give it to a buddy and he fixes it.
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Its really worth it to take the time and get antivirus installed. You can even go the route I did, with Avast, because its free. It should be easy to install -- the hardest part is dodging around their attempts to get you to buy the non-free version (which has the same basic features... free is more than good enough).
As has been stated here, you really can't trust anything on the internet these days -- not even the work of our illustrious developers. I'd try to give you an analogy, depicting computer viruses like real life human infections, but frankly, the internet is such a cespool of rampant promiscuity that the analogy would probably have to be put in the Rants and Raves (NSFW) forum.
I don't know what you use your computer for besides eq99, but in general, I'd avoid typing your credit card or banking information into your computer from now until you reinstall windows (or move on to a new machine with antivirus). While, in the past, viruses have been relatively benign, focusing on replication, modern viruses bankrolled heavily by eastern European and Russian mafia is much more focused on monetizable data. Without knowing what particular virus you were hit with, there's no way of telling if something more insidious was left behind -- many viruses now open back doors that let "paying customers" put just about any software they please on your machine. Talk to your friend and see if he can identify the actual virus that hit you. A trip to the Symantec webpage for that virus will tell you if you have the benign replicating kind, or the moneygrubbing kind (look for words like "backdoor").
Antivirus doesn't make you invulnerable to these things, but it sure makes you the harder target.