Unwanted visitors...

Hi,

I installed Second Life the other night, it's fantastic. Unfortunately, I was just settling in when I got a "blue screen of death" and when I restarted the computer it was completely screwed up. It is as if something has been through the registry and shredded bits of it.

Whatever happened has killed my virus checker, firewall and System Restore and made most of my software useless, as well as generally screwing up Windows.

I have a new PC that handsomely meets all the requirements for Second Life so I'm sure it has nothing to do with the program itself. I was wondering if it were likely that I had caught a virus or a trojan or other nasty piece of internet slime.

Have there been reported cases of these things being spread using Second Life?

I use Sygate firewall and told it to allow all activity by the Second Life program.

Thank you
Jinny

Actually, it turns out that SL *is* a virus. It's a very clever trojan-horse that tricks people into installing it and uploading a great many images to the LL server. Once installed it will consume all of your computer's resources while it's running and take up an enormous amount of your money and free time.

Er... actually, I haven't heard of any viruses that spread via SL. Never had any problems w/ it myself. If your computer is brand-new, are you sure that it actually worked before you isntalled SL? It may be that there was a flaw in the software or hardware, and running SL simply exposed it. SL tends to push hardware in ways that other games -- er -- software don't.

Nice catch, Cubey. This debate makes me long even more for the country sticker with SL on it that I proposed a while back in the RL SL slogan thread.

</threadjack>

(we now return you to your regularly scheduled forum posts)

And viruses spreading via SL is pretty unlikely -- I've been here since a few days after Beta ended, and haven't heard of one either.