Blog Alert: Edgy Mama and the great laptop miracle

It’s every blogger’s nightmare: Your faithful and beloved laptop—the one true friend you can count on in this digital world gone mad—suddenly becomes an unstable, unpredictable, ulterior-motive driven mess. Spyware, like some fringe religious cult, has brainwashed (or CPU-washed, if you prefer) it against you.

This is exactly what happened to local blogger Edgy Mama, when her once-devoted (and slightly anthropomorphized) laptop came down with a case of malware-itis. Here’s a sample:

“My beloved laptop, my Solace, as I have named her, has been in the pasty-white hands of computer technicians for two days. Be healed, I begged. And she was. But only after the young techs ridded her of evil spyware, including one program that totally effed with my head by erasing the nearest hyperlink every time I typed the letter ‘l.’ … Anyway, the computer tech told me that spyware rode into my baby on one of those pop-up, click-on ads that are always flashing around the internets. Most likely, one of the kids clicked where it said “Click Here” and thus the spyware was transferred. Worm-like, it invaded my Solace’s innards, and thereafter, every time I surfed the internets, it invited its friends to hop in as well. Who knew that spyware has friends?”

This is a common tale these days, and no one—even those with digital watchmen named Norton and McAfee—seem to be wholly immune. Anyone out there have a virus, spyware or browser hijacker story they’d like to share? Let’s hear some horror stories to set the week off right.