I am the poster formerly known as Ktkat1949. Twelve days ago, I got a spoof email from a friend urging me to download an extension for Chrome, raving about how wonderful it was. So I downloaded it. I was a malicious software bot that completely took over my computer. Has this ever happened to you?

This bot literally overwhelmed my entire computer. Because I had 'saved' my passwords, it was able to hack into all of my banking, credit cards, and websites. It immediately changed all my passwords, emails, phone numbers, and addresses. If I tried to change a password, I couldn't because I didn't know what password was being used by the bot. If I tried to phone my credit card company, they would not accept who I was because the phone number had been changed, and they would not recognize me as the owner of the card. What would you do if this happened to your computer?

Well, I tried to fix it myself and used various scans I downloaded. Nothing worked. So I call for a tech. Two hours later, he told me he could not fix it because he could not access my email. My next-door neighbour teaches computer engineering at the local university. She couldn't fix it. I ended up having to buy a new computer, which I just got yesterday. Would you go this far?

I now have to rebuild my tech life from scratch. My only saving grace is that I was able to stop the loss of any funds from my various accounts, but now I have to wait for my credit cards to be replaced and that takes 7 to 10 days! Could you live without your credit cards that long? ( Fortunately, I had just got my pension, so I had some cash )