Warning about Swagbucks
A warning to anyone who is considering downloading anything from Swagbucks!!! A few days ago I decided that I surf the web often, so I should sign up for Swagbucks and earn points for surfing around. Maybe get an Amazon gift card here and there–I get excited about a $5 gift card and I love Amazon–it all sounded so good! Creating an account and surfing the web using their search engine would have been fine (from what I read now). BUT I decided to download their toolbar. BIG ENORMOUS MISTAKE. DO. NOT. DO. THIS. I trusted too easily, since I have heard from relatives and other bloggers that Swagbucks is so great, and I just walked right into a huge problem.
Dowloading the toolbar also wiped out my computer. At least from what I can tell. I can’t get on it, it keeps running things to try to fix an error the computer recognizes, but can’t seem to recover from. It tells me to uninstall whatever I last installed, but I have no idea how to go about that when I can’t even get into the computer. Luckily we just renewed our McAfee subscription and I backed up my computer in December. Unluckily I’m going to have to tell my husband about this because it is outside of my DIY realm. I’m not the only one who has had this problem I have found now that it is too late.
I am thankful that it was not on the computer that we use for any financial accounts since others began to have suspicious things happen when they logged in to their bank’s site. Always be wary when you are suddenly asked for information you’ve never had to provide in the past.
Hopefully the recovery will go ok, fingers crossed. So glad I backed it all up not too long ago! Two things to learn from me:
1) Go back up your computer, right now.
2) Don’t download anything from Swagbucks.
Now I’m off to break the news to the Hubs. Anyone familiar with how Rachel apologizes to Ross when he discovers she and Joey are dating? I’ll be using that technique…(I love Friends. Perhaps too much.)
15 Responses to “Warning about Swagbucks”
Thanks for taking the time to tell me what you think!
Grab a button
Follow me!
The only plywood I use
Pink Toe Projects (click on the picture to get to the post)
Build your own crates:
Under Sink Storage:
Closet Organization:
/
Pottery Barn Statton knock off in twin:
Pottery Barn Inspired Bedside Table:
Twin Storage Bed with Drawers:
Hide washer & dryer hookups:
Built-In Cabinet and Shelves:
Entryway Bench:
Board & Batten:
Laundry room cabinet & hutch:
Painting the dining room table:
Leaning wall shelves:
Thrift store lamp revamp:
Refinishing door hardware:
The $20 (or not) storage closet door:
Ruffle Flower Pillow:
Luggage Tag Tutorial:
TeePee Tutorial:
Fresh Eggs sign tutorial:
how terrible! after everything is running smoothly, don’t forget to schedule backups. Here’s a tute for how to set up win7 to backup (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Set-up-or-change-automatic-backup-settings) and for getting the computer to wake up for the task (http://naveensnayak.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/windows-7-wake-up-the-computer-for-scheduled-backup/). Thankfully Mac backup is much more simple (time machine).
Thanks for the info!
Perhaps this will come too late but a suggestion – before you restore from your backup, you may be able to pull your hard drive, attach it to another computer, delete the bad program, reinstall the hard drive to your computer and boot back up. If you aren’t familiar with computers, just ignore me and take it to someone who can help you. If you know a little about computers, this is an easy fix. Feel free to contact me with any questions – I’m not a computer expert or professional but i have fixed more than my fair share of computers!
Thanks Jill! I passed that info along to the computer fixers in my family who know more than me…
Yuck! So so so sorry, thanks for the head’s up. btw, how does Rachel apologize to Ross?
It’s funnier in the context of the actual show, but here’s the clip of her just apologizing…emphasizing a certain part of her anatomy…we’ll see if it works here at my house
You may have already gotten your computer problems resolved, but if you turn off your computer, turn it on again and hold down the F7 key (that’s the key I use on my toshiba), you can go into safe mode and uninstall swagbucks and create a new restore point. Once that is complete, you will need to restart and it should hopefully resolve your issue. Sorry you have had problems. Good Luck.
Kim, Thanks for that tip–I did go in there and try it just now (just in case Hubs didn’t use that method). Even searched for the Dell key in case it was different from Toshiba (search said use F8–I tried both!!). Nothing, darn it. It won’t go into the safe mode. Just asked Hubs and he had tried that and couldn’t get it to go there either.
Hubs has tried a LOT of restore points–even going back to the factory default mode it came to me in and no luck
We are discussing whether to have McAfee step in at this point, or put the money we’d spend on that into a new one (mine’s 4 years old and has other minor problems).
Thanks again–it was well worth trying!
I’m super bummed to hear about this but I had to laugh a little with the Friends reference… Love that show!
Ha! Just watched the video…lol! You’re a hoot!!!!!
Hubs laughed when I did it
Wow, just last week I was going to sign up for Swagbucks. Something stopped me. Glad I didn’t as I have financial info on my computer. Thanks for the heads up!
If you still want to use it, you can sign up for an account and then just search through Swagbucks.com. From what I’ve read, that part is safe–they just collect info on you. But Google, Facebook, Target, and anyone and everyone else is doing that anyway! The danger is in downloading stuff, in my case the Swagbucks toolbar. Personally I won’t go near Swagbucks again–in any form. Also, if you want to surf the web without getting info gathered on you, do it in Private Browsing. It is a bit of a pain because you have to remember to click on Private Browsing every time you open the browser (every browser has a different way to do it–if you are interested, do a search on the browser you use. Just don’t search for that using Swagbucks, lol!)
I just signed up for Swag Bucks and when they asked me to download the toolbar, I thought, “Kevin would NOT want me to do this!” Glad I listened to that little voice! Hope your computer woes get worked out. You can tell me Sunday night when I see you!
I wish I had listened to my little voice!!!! It was even warning me and I ignored it. Can’t wait til Sunday!