Do i have a virus or does god hate me?

[americanjebus]

Ok, for a while now i have been surviving on the internet bussiness thing buy using money orders, debit card, and favors by using my freinds paypal.

ebay is off limits from me because i cant even access their site sometimes. GRRRR. Paypal is even worse, i cant even get to their site. Much less open an account with them so i ask for some advice if anyone here has any idea why my computer of all computers cant access these sites.

I have used links from different places that have allowed me to get into ebay. but if i just type www.ebay.com or www.paypal.com into my account it stops and gives me a blank screen or if i click a link going to paypal it says it was refused.

I am running Mozilla, but i also run Avant, and firefox, None work. I can access these sites from any other computer, just not mine. I was told other sites i cant access like Amazon.com wont work with mozilla so thats why i tryed these other sites. and IE sucks and i dont trust it worth shit.

so i ask, has anyone encountered any viruses or spyware that would be detected by the servers hosting paypal, ebay, and amazon.com that would block me or refuse my access?

im at the point where im considering loading all of my vital data from this computer into an external drive and just reformating this damn computer.

Any help would be awsome, it'd be nice to buy stuff securely from now on.
-Luis

 

[1jzdreamer]

Im not positive if this will work or not but you could try turning down your security settings in firefox.

 

[JustAnotherVictim]

God hates you.

 

[swaq]

My first suggestion would be to get a Mac, but that's often not feasible either for technical or monetary reasons.

I'm going to assume you are running Windows XP. So some sites work but others don't? Go here on your hard drive:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc (assuming Windows is installed on your C: drive)

Now look at the file called 'hosts' (open it with notepad or some other simple text editor). It should just have just this line in it, assuming you haven't modified the file before:

127.0.0.1 localhost

... and maybe some comments, designated with a '#' symbol at the start of the line. If the file has anything extra, particularly any lines mentioning sites that you can't access, then the hosts file has been maliciously modified.

I would highly recommend replacing the hosts file with an ad-blocking hosts file, whether or not yours has already been modified (you can get a good one here: http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html).

 

[americanjebus]

My first suggestion would be to get a Mac, but that's often not feasible either for technical or monetary reasons.

I'm going to assume you are running Windows XP. So some sites work but others don't? Go here on your hard drive:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc (assuming Windows is installed on your C: drive)

Now look at the file called 'hosts' (open it with notepad or some other simple text editor). It should just have just this line in it, assuming you haven't modified the file before:

127.0.0.1 localhost

... and maybe some comments, designated with a '#' symbol at the start of the line. If the file has anything extra, particularly any lines mentioning sites that you can't access, then the hosts file has been maliciously modified.

I would highly recommend replacing the hosts file with an ad-blocking hosts file, whether or not yours has already been modified (you can get a good one here: http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html).

SOAB!

that is the most usefull response i think i have ever had.
if we had the rep system i'd rep you for every post you've made.

i found this.
127.0.0.1 www.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 securityresponse.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 symantec.com
127.0.0.1 www.sophos.com

127.0.0.1 www.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 liveupdate.symantecliveupdate.com
127.0.0.1 www.viruslist.com
127.0.0.1 viruslist.com
127.0.0.1 viruslist.com
127.0.0.1 f-secure.com
127.0.0.1 www.f-secure.com
127.0.0.1 kaspersky.com
127.0.0.1 kaspersky-labs.com
127.0.0.1 www.avp.com
127.0.0.1 www.kaspersky.com
127.0.0.1 avp.com
127.0.0.1 www.networkassociates.com
127.0.0.1 networkassociates.com
127.0.0.1 www.ca.com
127.0.0.1 ca.com
127.0.0.1 mast.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 my-etrust.com
127.0.0.1 www.my-etrust.com
127.0.0.1 download.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 dispatch.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 secure.nai.com
127.0.0.1 nai.com
127.0.0.1 www.nai.com
127.0.0.1 update.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 updates.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 us.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 liveupdate.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 customer.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 rads.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 trendmicro.com
127.0.0.1 pandasoftware.com
127.0.0.1 www.pandasoftware.com
127.0.0.1 www.trendmicro.com
127.0.0.1 www.grisoft.com
127.0.0.1 www.microsoft.com
127.0.0.1 microsoft.com
127.0.0.1 www.virustotal.com
127.0.0.1 virustotal.com
127.0.0.1 www.amazon.com
127.0.0.1 www.amazon.co.uk
127.0.0.1 www.amazon.ca
127.0.0.1 www.amazon.fr
127.0.0.1 www.paypal.com
127.0.0.1 paypal.com
127.0.0.1 moneybookers.com
127.0.0.1 www.moneybookers.com
127.0.0.1 www.ebay.com
127.0.0.1 ebay.com

that link is dead btw but i still managed to find it.

 

[swaq]

Yep, my fiancée had that happen to her computer before. Basically the virus or spyware or whatever you got doesn't want any virus scanners to be able to get the latest updates so it changes the hosts file to block the update sites (as well as some other stuff). As soon as you fix/replace the hosts file you'll want to update your virus scanner (if you don't have one get one for free from http://free.grisoft.com) and then have it scan your system.

Glad I could help

 

[swaq]

that link is dead btw but i still managed to find it.

Oops, looks like the vBulletin software added the ")" to the URL at the end, I'll fix the link in my first post.

 

[MA70Supra88]

One precaution for this we used to take at work was to make the hosts file "read-only."

edit: just looked at the one you posted, swaq. That's pretty cool. Is that file updated frequently as new sites come out?

 

[ValgeKotkas]

I use Spybot SD and it protects me agains these bad sites It updates the hosts file (just now realized how it works)

 

[annoyingrob]

Get some good antivirus software. The fact that your hosts file looks like that tells me that you don't have any, and if you did, you haven't bothered updating it in quite a while.

Everybody has a different opinion on antivirus software, but my opinion is that you should go out and buy some good software. Free stuff will work well as a stop-gap measure, but ultimately, you should get a good antivirus suite. I find Norton is absolute crap, and I tend to stay far away from it. I prefer Trend Micro Internet Security, it's a decent price, and it's licensed to install it on 3 computers at a time. Kaspersky antivirus is very good as well. Do some internet searches for antivirus reviews.

 

[swaq]

One precaution for this we used to take at work was to make the hosts file "read-only."

edit: just looked at the one you posted, swaq. That's pretty cool. Is that file updated frequently as new sites come out?

Yeah, that file is updated quite regularly. If you look in the file he has comments for the date that each section was added. Also, once you realize how it works it is really easy to add your own to the file.

Get some good antivirus software. The fact that your hosts file looks like that tells me that you don't have any, and if you did, you haven't bothered updating it in quite a while.

Not necessarily. Since the virus blocks update sites he could have got the virus before he got the update that detects that virus, and then he wouldn't have been able to update his virus scanner anymore. I do agree though that you should always be running an anti-virus program and making sure it is regularly updated (most should be set to automatically update every day, but you should check every now and then to make sure it is getting updates).

 

[annoyingrob]

Not necessarily. Since the virus blocks update sites he could have got the virus before he got the update that detects that virus, and then he wouldn't have been able to update his virus scanner anymore. I do agree though that you should always be running an anti-virus program and making sure it is regularly updated (most should be set to automatically update every day, but you should check every now and then to make sure it is getting updates).

Yeah, what I was getting at was since the sites were blocked, the antivirus has not been updated in a while, and he should do something about that I guess I didn't express that very well in my post.