My laptop computer has become totally worthless right now and I’m not sure when I can afford to have it fixed or if it can even be fixed.

Early last year it was acting up so took into a repair office, and several hundred dollars later and a lot of mumbo jumbo computer geek speak, it was up and running with a shiny new super duper security system.

Well that security system didn’t prevent my laptop from being taken over last week by something that is now blackmailing me.

I only visit about six or seven websites, all of them I know well and I haven’t opened any emails in months and months so I have no idea where this thing came from.

I was in the middle of playing a game on facebook and a big “personal security system” box opened up with a flashing warning saying my computer was under attack and I had 346 viruses, trojans, worms and a long list of scary things (including password stealers) scrolled below the message. At first I thought it would a warning from my security program or perhaps something from AOL’s security software. However, my security program icon was no where to be found and I couldn’t even locate it under “all programs.” The flashing warning screen wouldn’t let me close it and I couldn’t find “personal security system” listed any where in “all programs” menu so that I could uninstall it. On top of that, the computer was now blocking all the websites (like facebook) that I visit saying that they were the ones attacking the computer.

So I shut everything off and walked away.

The next morning I turned it back on and there was the big screen again flashing at me. My security program icon was back and I scanned everything but nothing was found so it has been disabled or is just totally useless against whatever this thing is.

Just to see what would happen, I clicked on the flashing screens button that said to remove the viruses, trojans, and worms and another window popped up saying it would cost me $29.95 to download the necessary software to get rid of various viruses, etc.

I may not know much about computers, but I am not dumb enough to plug in my credit card information into a computer screen that was put there by some invading program.

So for now my laptop is blackmailing for $29.95 or it will continue to block all websites and flash this annoying big warning screen. I do not negoitiate with invading software so it can blink all it wants too. I won’t be turning the laptop back on any time soon.

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