Does anyone know what the heck is going on?
I've been asked to do a screencap of what the virus post looks like. Here it is.
It's the links shown in this screencap that you don't want to click.
Also, nobody panic, OK? This can be easily taken care of.
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ETA: 2:00 a.m. Mountain Standard Time, March 6: acari has linked me to a phenomenal post that gives a much better summary of what this virus is doing than I have given here. Please read it. It contains an answer to a question people have been asking a lot today: what are those Russian/Cyrillic LJs that keep randomly friending my account? They are bots, apparently, and should not be friended back. Otherwise, they may track your posts. :/
http://acari.livejournal.com/357555.html
I know that a lot of people who do not read much English are reading this post. I'm sorry that it's becoming very long and confusing. I'm trying to figure out how to edit it to be more helpful for you.
ETA: 2:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. It seems this post may be linked in a few places, as I've had a couple visitors from outside my friends' list (Hi there <3 and thanks for stopping by!) Feel free to link it around, or discuss what's going on wherever you like. The more comms that know about this, the better.
Since people have been asking, I reported this incident to LJ abuse yesterday, but have yet to receive a response. In the meantime depression has been attacked again by a different LJ, which is now set to moderate the community. If you go there, remember do not click on any of the links in the top post on depression! that is how this virus is being spread!. Just so I'm clear, clicking on a link TO such a post (like http://community.livejournal.com/depression/8467690.html, which I don't even think leads anywhere now) is harmless. It's just when you click on a link IN the post itself that you have problems.
I really don't understand why I can't seem to express this clearly. Forgive me.
If any of you have clicked on the links in a similar post to the one described below, copperbadge, who had a similar problem last year, has some helpful information on how to protect yourself in this tag: http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/tag/picking+up+the+pieces (read from bottom to top). Thanks to freckles42 for this info.
If you did click on any of the links, please run a virus scan and on your computer. If you don't have a virus program, people have recommended Avast! to me as a good free program to get. Ad Aware is also a good one to download and run.
*sigh* I feel sort of useless giving tech advice here, though, because I am very computer illiterate. More updates as they come.
A note: Do not click on any of the links that appear in the post to which I've linked, or in any similarly worded post you see anywhere. It's a trap! virus.
The moderator of a fairly large LJ community to which I belong has just posted the following message:
Dear friends, I, as the maintainer of the community, have to inform you that, due to the recent tragic events, I've decided to stop using LJ as a platform for my community. From now on, all new depression-related materials should be posted to the new community I've recently created, as for old posts, you will be able to find them there.
There are several links in the post, which all go to pages that are written in Russian or some other language that uses the Cyrilic alphabet. When I googled this phrase, I found out that it has apepared on other comms which have now had their content deleted.
... Um. Does anyone know what this is about? Is there a virus sweeping LJ that is taking control of people's LJs and then deleting their comms? I'm wary of that, so I have not posted the actual links themselves. If you want to see the actual moderator post for yourself, click here: http://community.livejournal.com/depression/8467690.html
This is kind of distressing.
It's the links shown in this screencap that you don't want to click.
Also, nobody panic, OK? This can be easily taken care of.
----
ETA: 2:00 a.m. Mountain Standard Time, March 6: acari has linked me to a phenomenal post that gives a much better summary of what this virus is doing than I have given here. Please read it. It contains an answer to a question people have been asking a lot today: what are those Russian/Cyrillic LJs that keep randomly friending my account? They are bots, apparently, and should not be friended back. Otherwise, they may track your posts. :/
http://acari.livejournal.com/357555.html
I know that a lot of people who do not read much English are reading this post. I'm sorry that it's becoming very long and confusing. I'm trying to figure out how to edit it to be more helpful for you.
ETA: 2:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. It seems this post may be linked in a few places, as I've had a couple visitors from outside my friends' list (Hi there <3 and thanks for stopping by!) Feel free to link it around, or discuss what's going on wherever you like. The more comms that know about this, the better.
Since people have been asking, I reported this incident to LJ abuse yesterday, but have yet to receive a response. In the meantime depression has been attacked again by a different LJ, which is now set to moderate the community. If you go there, remember do not click on any of the links in the top post on depression! that is how this virus is being spread!. Just so I'm clear, clicking on a link TO such a post (like http://community.livejournal.com/depression/8467690.html, which I don't even think leads anywhere now) is harmless. It's just when you click on a link IN the post itself that you have problems.
I really don't understand why I can't seem to express this clearly. Forgive me.
If any of you have clicked on the links in a similar post to the one described below, copperbadge, who had a similar problem last year, has some helpful information on how to protect yourself in this tag: http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/tag/picking+up+the+pieces (read from bottom to top). Thanks to freckles42 for this info.
If you did click on any of the links, please run a virus scan and on your computer. If you don't have a virus program, people have recommended Avast! to me as a good free program to get. Ad Aware is also a good one to download and run.
*sigh* I feel sort of useless giving tech advice here, though, because I am very computer illiterate. More updates as they come.
A note: Do not click on any of the links that appear in the post to which I've linked, or in any similarly worded post you see anywhere. It's a trap! virus.
The moderator of a fairly large LJ community to which I belong has just posted the following message:
Dear friends, I, as the maintainer of the community, have to inform you that, due to the recent tragic events, I've decided to stop using LJ as a platform for my community. From now on, all new depression-related materials should be posted to the new community I've recently created, as for old posts, you will be able to find them there.
There are several links in the post, which all go to pages that are written in Russian or some other language that uses the Cyrilic alphabet. When I googled this phrase, I found out that it has apepared on other comms which have now had their content deleted.
... Um. Does anyone know what this is about? Is there a virus sweeping LJ that is taking control of people's LJs and then deleting their comms? I'm wary of that, so I have not posted the actual links themselves. If you want to see the actual moderator post for yourself, click here: http://community.livejournal.com/depression/8467690.html
This is kind of distressing.