Might have a virus on my Lumia 820?

[xysazing]

Hello,

I was browsing Livejournal on my Nokia Lumia 820 using Internet Explorer, and the tab redirected and came up with the following message:

Warning:Your phone has (13) Virus!
This Virus may comput you data.

The English was terrible, but that was basically the message. I turned WiFi off immediately and turned the phone off, turned it on again and closed the tab before IE could reload it. I didn't click on the OK button for the page to 'check' my phone, or something similar. As soon as it came up, I turned the internet and the phone off and turned it back on to close the webpage before it reloaded. (I live in an area with rubbish signal.)

Should I take the phone in to be checked? I don't want to send it off because of the time without it and the risk of it being lost or damaged in transit. Yes, I'm a bit paranoid. But if it has got something on it, it needs to be scanned, etc.

 

[Memitim]

No it doesn't, those messages try and scare people into buying fake antivirus apps

 

[TheJoester09]

It sounds to me like this is just one of those pop-ups that appear on desktop browsers that try to trick people into think that their computer has a virus so that they'll download some program to "fix" it, which in reality is a virus itself. It was probably best to shut everything down the way you did, but I wouldn't worry. Windows Phones can't really get viruses like this because these viruses require you to download something in order for it to take effect, and you can't download software on a Windows Phone unless you get it through the store. Even if you were able to download something malicious, there's no possible way that it could install itself.

Long story short, there's nothing to worry about.

Though I am a bit concerned that there are people out there that still use Livejournal.

 

[xysazing]

It sounds to me like this is just one of those pop-ups that appear on desktop browsers that try to trick people into think that their computer has a virus so that they'll download some program to "fix" it, which in reality is a virus itself. It was probably best to shut everything down the way you did, but I wouldn't worry. Windows Phones can't really get viruses like this because these viruses require you to download something in order for it to take effect, and you can't download software on a Windows Phone unless you get it through the store. Even if you were able to download something malicious, there's no possible way that it could install itself.

Long story short, there's nothing to worry about.

Though I am a bit concerned that there are people out there that still use Livejournal.

Awesome, thank you both hugely. So as long as I didn't click OK on the message that popped up, which I didn't, nothing managed to download itself?

Heh, point taken with Livejournal I only go on there to socialise, the server's down the rest of the time...

 

[TheJoester09]

Awesome, thank you both hugely. So as long as I didn't click OK on the message that popped up, which I didn't, nothing managed to download itself?

Heh, point taken with Livejournal I only go on there to socialise, the server's down the rest of the time...

Right. And even if you had clicked ok, you likely would have gotten a message from the OS along the lines of "Can't download this file."

Sorry about the Livejournal crack, that's just one I haven't heard in a long time! lmao

 

[xandros9]

Viruses on Windows Phones are unheard of, primarily because its locked down pretty well (this ain't your grandaddy's Windows) and its marketshare makes Android a relatively juicy target. Even then you shouldn't have to overly worry about virii on Android just yet.

Also there is no onboard antivirus to even warn you anyways, it was just a harmless popup and even if you played along it shouldn't have been able to do anything other than flash some pictures, buzzwords and ask politely for your credit card info.

 

[rdubmu]

It is nearly impossible to get a virus on Windows Phone and Windows RT.

Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Tapatalk

 

[hprvez]

Viruses don't even exist anymore...

 

[Zaki Smile]

What I know about viruses on a Windows phone is that you can't get anything by running antivirus, because all apps are sandboxed so the are run in their "own enviroment" so they can affect each other, because that is a security risk. When uploading app to Store (I'm a developer myself) Microsoft is checking the apps eg. startup time and so they don't harm the users. If you have a virus you could have got this by an infected file by mail or something like that. My advice is to backup you phone and the make a factory reset. It could be that someone wants to scare you or it could be a bug.

 

[N_LaRUE]

What I know about viruses on a Windows phone is that you can't get anything by running antivirus, because all apps are sandboxed so the are run in their "own enviroment" so they can affect each other, because that is a security risk. When uploading app to Store (I'm a developer myself) Microsoft is checking the apps eg. startup time and so they don't harm the users. If you have a virus you could have got this by an infected file by mail or something like that. My advice is to backup you phone and the make a factory reset. It could be that someone wants to scare you or it could be a bug.

It was pretty obvious that the website detected they had IE running so it probably put up a popup to warn them of nasty viruses on their machine. It's a common ploy to get people to get virus software and it's a complete scam. WP does not need virus software. It won't even download files from email or elsewhere that would be a virus it would simply place them in temp folder as they are 'unknown'.

So telling them to do what you suggested would be a complete waste of time and effort. They had no viruses on their phone. It was just a scare tactic from a website.