Nothing happened. So, I repeated the process 2 more times and again nothing happened. Then, it dawned on me. If anyone were in my presence, they would have surely seen the panic in my eyes. A phishing virus successfully got my credit card number and was electronically transmitted to a digital vermin. I immediately consulted with my husband and called my credit card company. The representative on the phone broke down the worst case scenario: random purchases, stolen identity, etc. We hung up the phone to discuss the situation between us. I called my friend Candy who is an IT Manager. She walked me through a few step and asked me a few questions. I told her I was running Spybot and nothing else. She told me to refrain from clicking on the suspicious window, run Spybot to resolve the malicious files and restart my computer.

With fingers crossed, I was disappointed to find the virus pop-up screen laughing at me as my computer re-booted. Panic turned to anger. Well into the evening, I called another friend in my network, Marcel. Marcel is a senior IT consultant and a fellow business owner. I caught him out-and-about enjoying a cocktail. Marcel was understanding and listened to my situation. He said I was the second person to call him that week with the same problem. Marcel stopped by that night to pick up the computer, clean it and install a force field to ensure this would never happen again.

Still shell shocked by my experience, Marcel dropped off my computer the next day. He said I had 8 Trojans and a worm on my computer. Again, I was angry. How did this happen?! Marcel informed me that I was surfing the net without protection. But, I had Spybot. Its free! Its open sourced software!!! Apparently, it's not full proof against all malware. A difficult lesson to come to grips with. Thankfully, I had friends in my network who dropped everything to help me. Luckily, my husband was understanding about canceling our credit card. My computer is running back to normal with heavy duty virus protection.

The worst part is this experience affected my morale as a small business owner. I work hard. I work damn hard and to think that something or someone tried to take advantage of me...well, I took that personally.