In between clients, Tahireh Sharifaie sits at the computer inside her Derby hair salon. She clicks away at Facebook, looking at pictures of friends, keeping tabs on relatives in her native country of Iran, or checking her daily horoscope.
"If I'm not on Facebook I feel like I'm bored," she says laughingly.
Recently her giggles turned to grumbles when her computer was infected with a virus.
"Facebook is renowned for spreading viruses," says computer expert Bill Ramsey. The owner of The Bill Guy Technology Solutions. In recent months, Ramsey has done an unusually high volume of virus repair work. Most of it is the result of customers picking up dangerous spyware or viruses through links on Facebook. Links that say "You must see this video" or "I can't believe you did this" are virtually guaranteed to wreck your computer.
Ramsey says one particularly nasty bug disable will actually disable your whole system, except for one website. The goal is to trick you into buying phony anti-virus software.
"You wouldn't believe the number of people that pay this $40. Multiple times even because they get it back. Well it never goes away. This doesn't fix the problem. It is the problem," he says.
