I often get infected links thrown at me by infected people on my list. Haven’t had any odd files pushed towards me yet however.

He/she might want to look into low-rights accounts and Software Restriction Policy, if his/her version of Windows features SRP. This is a great proactive safeguard when handling malware.

http://www.mechbgon.com/srp

Tom McFadden
MVP – Windows Desktop Experience

MSNFix is the way to go to clean these infections up. They usually are nasty irc bots.

Download is available here:
http://sosvirus.changelog.fr/MSNFix.zip

Extract all files and launch MSNFix.bat

Note: Under Vista UAC should be disabled the time of the cleanup.

mechBgon wrote:
> He/she might want to look into low-rights accounts and Software Restriction Policy, if his/her version of Windows features SRP. This is a great proactive safeguard when handling malware.

Better still, s/he might want to look into disabling the ability of the IM client to auto-convert text URLs into clickable hyperlinks. For instance:
http://www.mess.be/msnmessenger75.htm (under “Security Options”)

This is an even-greater proactive safeguard against ever needing to “handle” malware resulting from “accidental” clicks. (And, if the IM client doesn’t allow that to be disabled, s/he might want to ask the question “Why not?”.)

I would also be curious about exactly what it is that’s pre-enabling a clicked-on _ZIP file_ to unpack–and automatically run–unknown executables leading to malware infection. What’s “arming” that “bomb” for the user to trigger?