So, I did something foolish the other day and downloaded a virus. (Long story short, and it’s no excuse, I searched for “filezilla” and then clicked on the first link I found – without checking where it was pointing to. Next thing you know, every time I opened a browser I was looking at this “Conduit” helpful search site… with all kinds of malware sniffers no doubt spinning away happily collecting my credit card information. (Like those poor companies haven’t suffered enough). Worst part is, I couldn’t do what I usually do – uninstall the program and reset any search engine settings – Windows Uninstaller wouldn’t remove it. And, I didn’t want to do a registry hack. What to do?

1. Removed Conduit from IE and uninstalled Google Chrome.
2. Installed CCleaner and ran it. (This didn’t remove it unfortunately)
3. Install AdwCleaner and ran (this got rid of the bulk of the settings
4. Installed Malwarebytes and ran (found some more settings
5. reinstall Chrome.

And that’s it, I’m “clean” now. I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable now, EXACTLY as if I’d caught some kind of terrible disease from being where I shouldn’t be. Let that be a lesson to myself!