That was weird--my Zone Alarm just warned me to get off myLot!

@dragon54u (31636)
United States
December 16, 2010 1:00pm CST
I received a notification that a friend started a discussion so I clicked on it and the minute the page loaded, Zone Alarm gave me a RED flag warning that the site was dangerous and was phishing information. I thought maybe I got a bad link from a spammer but went to the myLot main page to access the discussion--again, the red flag warning! I've never gotten one of those from Zone Alarm and I've had it for weeks and been on myLot every day. Does anyone have any idea what might be going on?
5 people like this
12 responses
• United States
16 Dec 10
It could be a false positive for Zone Alarm too. Programs can go haywire too. I would also advise contacting the admin as well though, just in case.
2 people like this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
16 Dec 10
I did just contact admin. Zone Alarm has never given me a false positive before and the list of sites I visit are pretty much the same day after day. So ZA is used to my being here. It was a weird discussion, a one liner from a person that does not usually post such things.
1 person likes this
@Rollo1 (16679)
• Boston, Massachusetts
16 Dec 10
Someone else mentioned the offers you get when you login to mylot. That would have been my best guess since the offers pre-fill with your real name and other info. It's better to never sign out and avoid the whole thing as you do. In this kind of situation, I usually check the forums for the software that is giving me the warning. Sometimes virus scanners, for instance, will flag harmless applications as viruses. But the Zone Alarm forum has no mention of this problem. In addition to contacting mylot admin, you might want to post the problem on the ZA forum and see if any other users experienced it or know anything about it.
1 person likes this
@Rollo1 (16679)
• Boston, Massachusetts
16 Dec 10
I have used the free version of Zone Alarm in the past and it was okay once I got all the settings right for frequently visited URLs. I think they all tend to slow things down, as will any program that runs constantly in the background. I use Comodo now on two of my PCs (again the free version). I really don't worry enough to pay for anything... so far, I am either lucky or the free versions are good enough.
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
16 Dec 10
I'll try that. I bought Zone Alarm because I needed something good and it was a promo price of $15. I'm kind of sorry I did because it slows down my computer and when I'm researching and writing an article it can be maddening if it's updating--and it seems to update nearly constantly! I'm exaggerating, of course, but it's very annoying. I will visit the forum and see what they have to say about this and the red alert, thank you for the suggestion!
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
17 Dec 10
I will look into Comodo. I usually have to have my PC reloaded about once a year--some worm or virus gets me every time. That's $80 a year and I figured $15 for ZA was less expensive. I'm very careful and have a lot of preventative software but still, I get got! Thanks for the tip!
17 Dec 10
Hello dragon54u, I have never had such a thing happen to me when I am on line but contacting admin was the sensible thing to do. I know that they are out there but what kind of satisfaction is there to be had by doing all of this spam nonsense. Phishing is a different matter totally, that is just theft. Be careful at this time of year.
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
17 Dec 10
It's terrible that at the time of year that is famous for good will, the crooks come out in force. I will be careful and you do so, too!
@kodukodu84 (1569)
• Malaysia
17 Dec 10
I think you have to contact the admin regarding this problem dear. I never encountered the same or similar problem so far since I joined mylot. I was thinking if your computer is infected by a virus too. Because I had one before and it started telling that any program that I opened including Skype are trying to steal information from my computer. But lucky I have my malwarebytes and got rid of the virus. Good luck and have a nice day
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
17 Dec 10
I did contact admin, better safe than sorry. Scanned my PC with all my preventative and protection software and I'm clean, thank goodness. It was just weird. Have a great day!
@katie0 (5203)
• Japan
16 Dec 10
thanks so much for the warning, how did things go? is it okay to surf here?
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
17 Dec 10
It was just that one thing and I'm sure it's safe. The discussion was unusual for that person so I suspect maybe it was a phishing site that sent me notification of that person's discussion. I'm considering turning off my notifications but they are so convenient!
@ritwick (190)
• India
17 Dec 10
i'll advise you to get rid of zonealarm and put avast antivirus instead. Believe me you'll be a lot safer and also install malwarebytes anti-malware. You'll never need zonealarm. Bye.
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
17 Dec 10
I have Malwarebytes, my son repairs computers and highly recommends it. I'm going to give ZoneAlarm another chance as I paid $15 for it. And the last time I had to reload my PC because of a virus I had Avast installed. I'm sure it's a good program but it missed that particular attack.
@p1kef1sh (45681)
16 Dec 10
A pure guess but it could be that irritating "offer" that we receive when we log into this site. I have been lost for ages trying to get out of that maze of spam creating "offers".
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
16 Dec 10
I never get that offer and have never seen it but then, I'm always logged in and never "leave". It's just easier that way!
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
16 Dec 10
hi dragon54u I had zonealarm for a longtiem then one day it would not let me go to any site that I used, giving me red flags the whole bit and I knew theey all could not be bad so my son checked it out and my computer said zone alarm is corrupted.Mylot has been timin g out right in the middle of loading but I had copied my rfesponse to clipboard before I hit send so I waited went bact ot the last discussion got the response box open and hit paste and then send and I did not lose my response.
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
17 Dec 10
That happens to me sometimes, too, and it doesn't matter what type of protection I have. It's done it while I had Norton, AVG, Avast but not since I've had Zone Alarm. It's standard procedure for me to copy/paste my responses unless they are short like this one! I think it's not our protection but myLot.
@bunnybon7 (50973)
• Holiday, Florida
16 Dec 10
hopefully its a website you visited just before mylot or something. it would be terrible to have one of our favorite sites attacked just before xmas when everyone is needing so much extra money and so enjoying all the wonderful discussions going on right now. if you are able please let us know as soon as possible. maybe email me too to let me know whats up? hugs, bon
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
17 Dec 10
I doubt I'll ever know what it was for sure. I think myLot admins won't have time to reply to me. But if I do find out you'll be the first to know--after me!
• United States
16 Dec 10
Dragon- I would most certainly report it for the sake of all of us who use Mylot. I haven't seen anything like this but as there has been talk in the news of some of things going on in regard to protests, it's possible that sites that receive lots of traffic may well attract such behavior. Namaste-Anora
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
16 Dec 10
After seeing more than one person recommending I report it, I just did. There are some horrid people out there that don't care who they hurt. They should be locked up.
1 person likes this
@shibham (16977)
• India
18 Dec 10
Hi dragon... I have not ever faced this type of threatening. pErhaps mylot administration can help you. You should immediately inform them. Have a nice day.
• United States
16 Dec 10
Wow I have never received this type of message from myLot and I have Nortons Symmantec Endpoint, and it is a great server virus protector and would expect it to catch it. I did get this a couple months agao but from wordlinx each time I tried to log into it from Firefox, I could not understand why I was getting it so I tried and logged on from IE, which there I would not get the message. It turned out the next day we all received a message from wordlinx that the site was hacked. I suppose I was lucky as logging into via IE I did not get links so they were not able to key log my strokes. I hope you do get word back from admin regarding this as perhaps it is hackers of some form and we would all would like to assure myLot remains safe.
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
16 Dec 10
Wow, you lucked out not getting a worm or virus! I received a form email from admin stating that they will get to my email ASAP and I might not receive a reply. Well, I hope they look at it soon. This place is big enough that they must have hundreds of emails a day to wade through! Strangely enough, on the list of headings you can choose from for your email, security issues aren't listed.