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Last week while I was checking out an unknown website I got an error message is about computer doesn’t have the latest version of “active X” to play the video “Heavy metal kings – Zedi Mind tricks”. Because the song is awesome and I dieing to listen to the song I didn’t give a second thought about whether my active X is the latest version or not. I almost instantly clicked “yes” and to my ignorance I actually have downloaded a freaking group of viruses, Trojans and malwares!

Right after the download had finished, I received the error message “Virus found! Go to: blahblahblah.com and download the latest version of blahblahblah anti virus and protect your pc” and I was like, What the…!

Nightmare!

Well indeed it was. I knew the error message itself represents the virus and though it is just another marketing effort, ideas like these sucks big time. Anyways my bad, this one was the best virus I have ever seen! All my antivirus software’s were gone and to my wonder I wasn’t able to access “Task Manager”, the ‘Run’ option has been removed from my task menu and System Restore has been de activated! Holy cow! I mean whoa that sounds brilliant! The most intelligent virus one has ever seen!

That shit just got me god damn freaked out! I thought okay lets get down to business and lets clean this shit. I tried to install again the AVG anti virus and AVG anti spyware but the virus was smart enough, every time I wanted to restart the installation process it blocked the process and there came the message “Virus found! Go to blahblahblah.com and download the latest version of blahblahblah anti virus software”!

“Sure thing! No problem pal just give me a few more minutes to figure you out first”.

I restarted my computer and ran the computer on Safe Mode. Safe Mode is the best tool you can use to clean up a virus. When you run your computer on safe mode, it runs with very minimum resources it needs to run only the windows with very minimum features. You get no extra softwares running, not even your sound card!

The sweetest thing is you can run the virus checker and kill the viruses on safe mode that you couldn’t do on normal windows atmospheres. While you can clean most of the viruses being in normal windows mode, safe mode is best to kill those out smart ones. But my bad, this one is smarter than any other. It however allowed (or wasn’t aware) to install the anti virus software but remained undetected!

I thought okay lets restart the PC and hope it is not going to be there. Hell I was wrong, this time the virus blocked my access to Start Menu! Oh that’s just kick ass awesome! U know, Lets have a party shall we?

I immediately shut down the computer and was wondering what am I going to do! Sure I could follow the easiest way, I could format the C: drive and reinstall Windows but that’s not possible. All my bookmarks, all the files on My Documents, pictures and stuff will be gone forever. On the other hand it is impossible for me to pick up those files because u know what? Copy and Paste buttons or short cuts aren’t working too! So there you go, you only have two options,

1. Format C: drive (the easiest and the fastest way).

2. Do something else.

And I was thinking, I’m going to give it a hard time and I’m not going to format my C: drive either. Well a virus certainly isn’t smart enough than a human right?

So how did I clean them?

These are the steps I have followed,

1. Installed another windows on D: drive. It took me around 25 minutes to complete the installation process.

2. Installed AVG anti virus, AVG Anti root kit and AVG Anti Spyware.

3. Updated the virus definition files of all of ‘em.

4. Scanned the C: drive with each of them.

Bingo! Found a hell load of 47 Viruses and Trojans! the moral: “Being a group kicks ass”! But sorry fellas, its time to be super man and time to do some serious ass kicking. I immediately deleted the viruses and the Trojans and went to C: drive, There I found and deleted a folder titled as “Titan Shield Anti Virus”, which is exactly the same virus or group of viruses that did the mess.

I restarted the PC and logged on to the first windows I have on C: drive. Good news, I smell fresh air! All the viruses are gone! I put back the CD and modified the existing windows that I have on my C: drive and there you go, you have every thing with a fresh windows and it feels a lot better this time cause I can access everything!

The tips

So the tips will be:

1. Be careful, don’t download anything like active X, runX or anything like that from unknown websites

2. If you had to download, let your Anti virus or anti spyware software keep an eye on it, just activate the resident shield and it will automatically detect the virus. My bad, my AVG desktop shield wasn’t running when I was downloading the file.

3. add www.spy-shredder.com, www.xpy-shredder.com, http://www.virprotect.com to the blocked site list of your internet browser.

4. Always update your anti virus and anti spyware definition file list.

Happy Virus cleaning

Google is again the talk of the town for going cheap by reducing the payouts for google pack and Firefox downloads!

Google Pack: You can earn up to $2 when you refer an user through your link who downloads and runs Google pack for the first time. Starting the third week of February you will earn up to $1 per successful pack downloads referred by you. Well the good news is it is independent of user location or publisher location!

Firefox: Sad news for the Chinese publishers. Google will be reducing payments for Firefox referrals from china during the third week of February. This will only affect incase of installations from users in China.

We understand that these changes may decrease revenue for some of you currently participating in these referrals programs. While it is our goal to help publishers earn as much as possible with the AdSense program, like any other referrals advertiser, we are constantly evaluating our campaigns to make them effective and sustainable.

Apart from the bad news, Google did add a good news for the adsense referrals from Japan and Latin America by allowing them to promote their adsense referral account.

I believe Google has messed things up when they made adsense ad unites less clickable. Markus at plenty of fish reported that the CTR on text adsense ad units has declined about 60% in the last two months!

It is clear like day light that Google revenues are down and that they are trying to take back the control no matter what, even if that means taking it from the affiliates. I wonder if they will ever fix some of their problems to gain back the popularity among users.

I received a new email message from google adsense team yesterday mentioning about the new changes on their referral program. Well I believe there are hundreds of thousands of bloggers, website owner will be pretty disappointed on the new changes just as pissed as problogger is.

So what are the changes?

The current referral commission pay system works like this:

If you refer someone to adsense who makes $5 within 180 days you get a payment of $5.

If you refer someone to adsense who makes $100 within 180 days you get $250

If you refer 25 people who make $100 within a 180 day period you get a bonus payment of $2000

After January things will be changed back to the previous payment system which is:

If you refer someone to adsense who makes $100 within 180 days period you get $100.

That $5 and $2000 bonus idea is huge – while the numbers may not have been right, google surprised me by removing the incentive for publishers to refer them in this way. Meaning, if you have some publishers referred who already made $80-$90 but afraid they cant reach $100 within January you don’t get nothing at all!

Well that’s not enough! All the international publishers excluding North America, Latin America and Japan, you’ll no longer be able to participate in the referral program! This sounds so god damn sick that I don’t find any other reason but it’s the location of you as a publisher that excludes you from participating in the adsense referral system! This has absolutely nothing to do with your audience’s location, the topic and the quality of your blog or whatever other factor.

I wonder what’s the reason behind the decisions. Perhaps they need to slow down the flow of new publishers coming in just so they don’t have an oversupply. Another reason could be with so many other ad networks advertisers are going less with adsense which is causing an oversupply of publishers.

We have seen google trying to beat up Text Link Ads a while ago and now google is after a new target PayPerPost! Google is going after by reducing the PageRank of the popular blogs out there that uses PayPerPost as monetizing means. CEO of PayPerPost Ted Murphy has stated that many blogs already lost their PageRank to 0 from whatever they had previously.

It is no coincidence that Google has gone after some blogs that utilize PayPerPost and many of our competitors services. We offer a very attractive alternative to AdSense and are leading a charge to provide real monetization for everyday bloggers. Unlike the Google AdSense black box, we are palms up when it comes to revenue share and give bloggers the lions share of advertising dollars that they deserve.

He wondered as well why popular blogs like TechCrunch.com didn’t lose their PageRank for making sponsored posts.

I find it laughable that high profile bloggers like TechCrunch aren’t being penalized in the same way. Perhaps it’s the fact that they use AdSense. Perhaps it’s the fact that they are silicon valley insiders and are invited to special Google events. Either way I don’t see the difference between a sponsored post in our system or this sponsored post. Both are paid for, neither use no-follow.

TechCrunch also posted a reply on this here

I guess it’s the time for the advertisers to look for new ways to find good blogs other then looking at the PageRank of the blog because there are many blogs with a PR0 but very good amount of traffic.

I miss those old days of my life. when the world was beautiful and the sky was blue! Hanging out with friends, roaming around, sleeping all day and all night long was awesome. Didn’t have any idea that I was going to have a freaking busy future. Although I love working hard, but you can never be too happy being a busy guy. At least your friends can’t. These days I get almost no time for myself thus no time to visit my friends to hangout. I go to university at the morning then to my office and when I’m home I’m busy with my stuffs, and when its 10.30pm I’m in deep sleep, don’t even have a single moment for myself!

I guess you have already figured I myself Don’t have enough time to go for a girl friend well I don’t have any problem being a single guy. It feels awesome being alone. You get a lot of time to do whatever you want. You get no restriction, no calling someone special, no more pain and no more waste of money.

However, it was just another busy day today. Just wondering why my blog posts isn’t getting indexed by Google. Guess I have got to Wait a few more days. So I’ll back again with more updates when I am done digging further.

Just another man on the long line of guys suing Google! Dylan Stephen Jayne, from Pennsylvania seems to be seriously pissed of and he filed a $5 billion suit against the search giant! He says he has a social security number which is being discovered by Google when it is scrambled and upside down, it somehow looks like Google! i wonder he was talking about ‘Gooooogle’ because a social security number contains 9 digits!

On his all five hand written pages, implicate that google is using his social security number in a coded form and is responsible for compromising the safety of his social security number.

Mr. Jayne also said Google is not doing enough to fight terrorism and its not having any respect for his civil rights.

I wonder what google was thinking but if i was the guy, i would definitely put up another blog and put my adsense ads on to grab some real quick $$

Good luck to Mr. Jayne and lets see what happens.

PS. Just in case you wanted to check a screen shot of one of his hand written pages, you can visit: www.appscout.com/2007/09/man_sues_google_for_5_billion.php