"text typing" virus?

[Nikola Letic]

Hi,
my sister told me today something unusual. While she was typing some text,
suddenly computer took off keyboard control and some random english words
were automatically typed instead. Later she could type normally and delete
those words. No virus was found on computer during the test with AVG
(updated). Computer is on Windows XP (not updated recently) with office and
outlook. Is this some known virus or windows security flaw?
Thanks
Nikola

 

[Frederic Bonroy]

my sister told me today something unusual. While she was typing some text,
suddenly computer took off keyboard control and some random english words
were automatically typed instead. Later she could type normally and delete
those words. No virus was found on computer during the test with AVG
(updated). Computer is on Windows XP (not updated recently) with office and
outlook. Is this some known virus or windows security flaw?

Probably neither. Some word processors automatically do word replacement
(for example, they may automatically replace commonly mistyped words
with the correct version). Verify if there is a replacement table in the
options of the word processor.

As far as viruses are concerned, I seem to remember a few macro viruses
inserting words into the text but if AVG was updated then it is
improbable that you are dealing with one of those.

 

[Art S]

Hi,
my sister told me today something unusual. While she was typing some text,
suddenly computer took off keyboard control and some random english words
were automatically typed instead. Later she could type normally and delete
those words. No virus was found on computer during the test with AVG
(updated). Computer is on Windows XP (not updated recently) with office and
outlook. Is this some known virus or windows security flaw?
Thanks
Nikola

XP has a transcription program - you say something, it types it. If it hasn't been
"trained", it can do funny things. Take a look for it, and see if there is a microphone
that is turned on.

Art

 

[Gabriele Neukam]

On that special day, Nikola Letic, ([email protected]) said...

suddenly computer took off keyboard control and some random english words
were automatically typed instead

Turn off the automatic speech recognition of Windows XP, or at least the
microphone.

Googling would have shown that this issue was raised quite often in the
first year, after XP came out.


Gabriele Neukam

(e-mail address removed)