I feel so violated

I hate having viruses and I'm not talking about the ones that infect our body making us feel ill, uncomfortable or lethargic. I'm talking about the ones that make our computers ill. Trojan's!!

We have Norton Antivirus and our subscription expired in January of this year. When the big red "X" appeared cause it expired, I told my husband that we needed to update it with the new years version. He kept telling "not now, later". Sure, we were still protected from any viruses from that year or prior but anything new we weren't. I kept thinking to myself "boy, we sure are lucky but it's only a matter of time" as time went on . Well, Friday our luck ran out.

I got on the computer Friday, just after dinner and started browsing layouts for my blogger. I noticed that the computer started to slow down and then noticed at the bottom right by the time, there was an icon that I hadn't seen before. I clicked it and it popped up saying it was Antivirus XP 2008. I thought it was from my computer cause I have XP and thought it was telling me to purchase their antivirus cause my computer was infected. It also made it look like it was scanning my computer so I stopped the scan. That stuff just freaks me out. I had no doubt that my computer could have been infected but I wasn't purchasing something from a pop up. I feel more comfortable going down to Best Buy and purchasing it from there.

At that point I kept trying to get rid of it but it wouldn't go away and had no option to "close" or "exit". I decided to called my husband in to take a look. He started to accuse, it seemed ask me what I was doing before it came up. I explained and then informed him that it could have come from any of the sites either of us have visited and that we don't know how long it has actually been on our computer before it decided to act.

We started to worry that all 10,000 + pictures that we have accumulated on our computer would be lost from this. At that point we decided that it was finally time to purchase the new Norton Antivirus (you think??!!) and while we were there we picked up an external hard drive to save all our pictures cause I would just be devastated if I lost them. They date back to 2004 which is most of Sabrina's life.

We went to Best Buy, got what we needed and saved all the pictures. Now our computer is at Best Buy in the hands of the Geek Squad.......my heroes!! I just feel so violated that this had to happen. We have never had this problem in the 9 years we have owned a computer. The lame thing is, we feel so dependant on the thing. 15 years ago computers weren't in most households and now look how we have become, so dependant on them. It's as if our lives revolve around computers. I must say, for us it's pure convenience, really. If anything we want to do, we look on the computer for where to go, what time things start or even directions. We even book all our vacations that way. We can price check and it's just easier and faster than contacting a travel agency.

So, here I am at work (once again!) blogging cause of course, I can't do it at home. At least I can come here and update or check all the things I need to. It's just a good thing the boss isn't here all this week!!