Tragery!

[nenena]

I'm posting this from my mom's computer, lol.

Anywhoo, my laptop decided to eat a bunch of viruses this morning, and I basically wasted the entire day today just trying to get it to stop hitting itself. No less than four antivirus programs (AVG, Spybot, BitDefender, and PC Doctor)* ultimately proved unable to save the day. Now my registry is completely corrupted, Firefox is uninstalled, IE isn't working, and the whole thing is kind of borked. Soooooooo tomorrow Debbie is confiscating my laptop and taking it to one of her computer-expert friends who will (hopefully) be able to clean it out, and possibly completely reinstall Windows. This process will take several days. I spoke to the dude on the phone, and he seemed optimistic that it wouldn't come down to a Windows reinstall, but of course he couldn't say for sure without looking at the laptop itself.

*No, I didn't run them at the same time, I'm not stupid.

What this means is...

1. Scanspam Week is temporarily delayed. Um.

2. Some other things that I wanted to get done this week won't happen either - I have a prettyful update to PDK that isn't going to happen, and somebody just donated a bunch of doujinshi scans to Starlight Pops that aren't going to be added anytime soon.

3. Fortunately, I have two giant doujin dumps ready to post on shibusen as soon as possible. And I can probably do that from my mom's PC, as it's just a matter of uploading the right files, and I don't even have to use an FTP program or anything for that.

4. Unfortunately... Yeah, so I have those two giant doujin dumps sitting on my harddrive, and the scans from Honey009 alone are TOTALLY ILLEGAL in the state of Iowa (hell, probably in the United States period - oh hell, let's not pretend, those images violate all of Japan's obscenity laws too) - and tonight I have to panic about getting all of that stuff on a bunch of flash drives and trying to erase every possible trace of it from the laptop. Fun times!

So tonight I look forward to many hours of fun and excitement, trying desperately to back up my data safely, while at the same time erasing anything from my computer that would cause the FBI to come knocking on my door, since I *am* about to hand over my machine to a total stranger. And since this *is* Iowa. You know, the home of Christopher Handley. Um.

Oh wait, here's the icing on the cake: So, I probably didn't mention this to people who don't know me IRL, but back in June this year I had some major drama with my identity being stolen by a thief in Canada. He got my Paypal login, my credit card information, my SSN, and he even managed to get my freakin' credit report from one of those free credit report companies. I'm still recovering from that shit, I had to close my old bank account and open up an entirely new one, my Paypal situation is still FUBAR, I have fraud alerts on my credit report, and I only *just recently* got a new credit card.

Okay, so, today? It turns out that the initial infection on my computer was the Trojan Mundo virus. That's the one that, like, invites other viruses to your computer to come and play. So PC Doctor informed me several times that my laptop was attempting to broadcast "unauthorized information" on the interbutts, and when I mentioned that to Debbie's friend the PC Dude on the phone, he said, "Oh yeah, if it's the Trojan Mundo virus, and if PC Doctor caught your computer trying to send information on the internet, that probably means that your credit card has been compromised."

My brand new credit card.

I told Debbie about that, and she literally banged her head against the shelf that we have on top of the fireplace. I'm going to go ahead and count that as a headdesk. It's not quite "desk" that's involved but it's close enough.

So yeah, now I have to wait a day or two to see if indeed my new credit card HAS been compromised, in which case I'm pretty much fucked. Oh yeah and I'm supposed to be moving to Kentucky and setting up utility, phone, and internet contracts next week. With my FUBAR credit history and fraud alerts all over my name, this is going to be fun!

Anyway, yeah. That's how I spent my Sunday. Blaaaaarrrrrrgh.

Comments

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I have CCCleaner, but it wouldn't even run on my computer when I tried it.

And yes, I got my annual credit report - the thief actually applied for and got one first, that was part of the problem, but I managed to get a second one before locking down all of my information with the fraud alert stuff.

Right now all of my credit is frozen, and it has been for about a month and a half now. The stolen card was canceled ages ago and I've only ever used the new card once. I've put a fraud alert on my *credit report* which means that any time somebody tries to sign up for a subscription or make a major purchase using my name - not even any specific credit card number, just my name - the CC company will call a phone number that I gave them in order to verify with a bunch of security questions that I am, indeed, myself. If the phone call isn't answered, the purchase will be instantly blocked. And yes - having already had the opportunity to use it once - I can safely say that this system works. :)

[broccoman.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't really have anything to worry about then, on the fraud end, though credit freezes are a hassle.

The computer on the other hand...

Hopefully the rest of your time back in the US goes better, and Kentucky's not that bad from what I've heard. Just hope you like college basketball ^_^.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

It's the credit freeze that I'm really worried about, since right now my mom and I are desperately trying to get them to change the contact phone number to my cell phone number, but it's a convoluted process. If we can't get this done in time, then I won't be able to sign up for anything in my name - no phone, no internet, no cable TV, no electricity - when it's moving day next week. Because the creditors will be calling my home phone number and I won't be there to answer. I also won't be able to make any major purchases like, say, a matress.

In a worst-case scenario, we plan on using my mom's boyfriend's credit card and signing up for my utilities in his name. But hopefully we can get the phone numbers straightened out first.

This wouldn't have been an issue if I hadn't been living in Japan up until last week. But of course I had to start all of this fraud alert stuff while I was still in Japan, and I didn't have a US cell phone number to give them, so it was my home phone number or nothing.

[broccoman.livejournal.com]

That might be worth talking to Clark Howard over. He might have an idea how to get the ball rollling a lot faster- he's got a lot of pull, especially in the South.

He's kinda like a combo of Andy Griffith show and Ralph Nader.

Generally, I've never needed a credit card for anything offline. At least in this neck of the woods, they tend to prefer cash. Unsure if KY would be any different.