Some time around 2010 or so I found a FREE DOWNLOAD for some software I wanted on Youtube. Normally I wouldn't fall for such a thing, but the video had a huge amount of likes and a basically no dislikes so I thought it was legit (I wasn't well-acquainted with the concept of view bots). Ended up with some nasty malware, had to reinstall. Don't run executables off youtube, kids.

Also there was a point before that I got ultra-paranoid about my computer having a virus, and I would Google processes in task manager and got super scared and installed some fake rogue antivirus from a 'company' called Uniblue. A lot of their 'marketing' was pretending they were part of Microsoft, and I thought it was super legit. It wasn't. Turns out being paranoid about computer security when you are completely computer illiterate is a perfect way to get malware.

Personal: Booted up a friend's infected disk on my Amiga, which then infected the HD. Mass panic for ten minutes or so as I ran Virus Checker or VirusZ on it.

Work: In 2003-ish we had an infection of... I can't even remember the name of it, but we had to manually go round and run a program on everybody's computer to get rid of it.

Since then I've seen a few people get their files encrypted by Ransomware, but no major infections.

Was installing Windows XP and forgot to unplug the computer from the internet. It got a virus during install.

I've never been able to confirm if it's true or not but around 2014/2015, I had a malicious Firefox extension that apparently originated from Google Chrome. What it did was basically put ads on all webpages, including blank pages and it was really hard to remove because it would just keep reinstalling itself until I uninstalled Chrome and then found and deleted the folder that contained the origin of the malware.

I wasn't able to do much research on my own, mostly because I didn't really know how to, but everyone online (possibly including Mozilla themselves) who was infected by the malware believed that Chrome downloaded the malicious Firefox extension. The main reason people believed it was because not only did the malware only seem to infect users who had both Chrome and Firefox installed but the origin of the malware would keep reinstalling itself until you removed either Chrome or Firefox and stuck with just one browser.

Don't remember how it happened but when I was a kid I got this virus on my laptop that would randomly open hundreds of Firefox tabs with this picture of Jeff the killer, with screaming audio at maximum volume and flashing black and white so fast it def would have killed an epileptic. Probably the most scared I'd ever been at that point. It also turned on my webcam light every time it happened, so somewhere on some filthy shut ins hard drive is a video of me at 12 years old throwing my laptop

I don't think I've had any particularly bad ones. In fact I don't remember having any since my age was in the single digits tbh. The only time I remember having malware was once when I tried to install iTunes on Windows for some reason, and I got infected with some kind of malware from trying to download this. I don't remember what exactly it did—I think it was just adware that interacted with your browser, nothing too crazy. I think I may have done a fresh install or factory reset to get rid of it. I was really young at the time and I don't recall getting malware since. I've definitely never (consciously) experienced malware on Linux, yet. (I say consciously cause for all I know maybe someone's bugged me with a keylogger I've not detected idk. Hope not!)

Only virus I ever got was pespaces back in the 95 days it was a hard mess to clean up mainly because it infected every single exe file and broke a lot of them.

Kinda remember cleaning it up from a dos floppy then once clean basically reinstalling every broken program one at a time.

In hindsight I should have just done a fresh install but I was new to computers.

That one time back, from so long ago, when I was less techy than 2024 me, when everytime I opened my old Android phone, the browser would open up a Thai porn site. I went to the applications list on that old phone, and found an empty app with no icon and uninstalled it, and it stopped happening.

So grandpa had a computer problem. Turns out he installed one of the early locker trojans. He: "It's all my own fault." Family: "no grandpa, that were some ugly hackers". So i removed the virus and checked the computer. Turns out it was his fault. He tried to watch "russian removed porn" and installed the virus in that process. He was like 85 and needed help washing himself. So IDK what his intentions were... The worst part: I had to keep a straight face and confirm the "hackers" therory. That secret will die with me. And now you.

Nothing major, just lots and lots of browser toolbars in the XP era and contact with some trojans (especially on torrents) that were thankfully caught by the antiviruses available back then.