OO

My husband's office computer ended up with a virus last week, as did 4 of his employees computers, perhaps coincidentally, but in all cases it happened while they were tracking hurricane Jeanne on weatherunderground. Both our home computers were fine, although I was on that website more than any other last weekend.

When he went to close the weatherunderground site Saturday, his computer suddenly started downloading a program. He couldn't find a way to stop the process so shut the computer down. When he rebooted, his screen was covered with icons for various programs, most of which were not exactly the sort of thing that should appear on an office computer, and not to be judgmental, but probably not your home computer either. Then pop-ups started, one upon another, layer after layer.

The office system does have a firewall, but this got past it. I have two firewalls activated....Norton's and Windows XP and we never got it on our home computers.

Just curious if anyone else had heard of this? I know many of us use that website when researching upcoming trips, and am the first to admit that I'm not computer savvy enough to know if this happened because they were on that website, or simply because they were on the Internet at that moment?

Patrick

OO, I don't think you could have spent any more time on Weatherunderground than I did. I kept it open 24/7. No problem here.

MarthaT

I use this website every day and have had no problems.

OO

Interesting. I wonder why those computers and not ours, and/or, if it had nothing at all to do with weatherunderground?

Patrick you have me beat...I was only on 23/7 .

Patrick

Sorry, OO, I lied. Actually since we lost power for 3 days plus during Frances and for 8 hours during Jeanne, I guess I was on much less than 24/7

OO

8 hours for Jeanne! I had no idea it affected your area that badly. We never lost power in Jeanne, thank heavens. It traumatizes DH to empty his hotel, as he did after Frances in our power outage.

I am downloading Service Pack II as we speak--added protection. You may never hear from me again!

Patrick

Jeanne didn't affect Naples at all really, but when the first breezes from Jeanne blew, our power went out from the same trees in the alley behind us that caused our problems during Frances. It only caused outage in a one block plus area of downtown Naples -- lucky us. We still haven't figured out why when they came and cut down the trees from the Frances blackout, that didn't solve the problem from future minor winds!! Incidentally, when one of the neighbors called, FPL said they'd be out "after the hurricane passed". The neighbor suggested they turn on their TV and look at the weather report. Nothing was happening here!

jor

No problems with weatherunderground here. Your office has a virus.

wagonwheel

ACKKKKKK...

The same ting happened to me, and I was using my office computer. I've had our tech guy in all day today trying to fix it, and he thinks it's related to weatherunderground site !!!

PS ( I'm in Canada. )

wncang

Yes, this happened to me Saturday. I came to the office after missing time for back to back flooding here in the western NC mountains. I checked weather underground and it immediately added maybe 15 icons to my screen, some of them were programs waiting to be run. I deleted all of them, sent the programs to the trashshut down and restarted. The computer seems ok now, the anti-virus programs at work must have helped.

LordBalfor

Here's a post on a technical forum board about the problem:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,11436798

Sounds like the problem was with one of the banner ad files and that it's been dealth with.

Ken

I have to say that Weatherunderground is not one of my favorite weather sites. In my experience, their South Pacific data is so inaccurate as to be nearly worthless.

OO

Thanks so much for that website LordBalfour. Amazing, and frightening. That's a trusted website.

Quite possibly I didn't get the virus too because both computers at home use Norton Internet Security, with ad blocking enabled. I don't get banner ads, which evidently were the culprit.

Again thanks. I'm forwarding the link to my husband. His IT person reinstall his OS by the way, to completely rid him of the programs. Deleting the icons wasn't doing the trick.