Safety Warning — Malware in Sims mods (Patreon)

Hey! Recently there have been a few cases of malware hidden in regular mods for The Sims 4. This malware is capable of stealing your saved browser passwords, social platforms private information, credit card or other financial information, and way more that's on your computer. Please get familiar with the information below to make sure you're safe and how to handle this situation.

If you're on the Sims After Dark discord server, you might have already heard of this happening.

At this moment there are at least seven known mods that you could have downloaded from ModTheSims, CurseForge, The Sims Resource, or LoversLab that contained malware in the TS4SCRIPT file.

• Cult Mod v2 by PimpMySims which was uploaded by an impostor account to LoversLab and ModTheSims around January 18th and January 27th.
• Social Events - Unlimited Time by MySims4 which was uploaded by an impostor account to CurseForge around February 7th.
• Weather and Forecast Cheat Menu, Mood Cheat Menu, Motherlode Menu and Seasons Cheats Menu by MSQSIMS which was uploaded by a hacked account to The Sims Resource around February 8th.
• Mouth Preset N16 by PlayersWonderland which was uploaded by a hacked account to The Sims Resource around February 8th.

It's impossible to know how many mods out there might contain malware. The general rule is to only download mods directly from creators that you know and trust. It's way less likely that their account is hacked, and you're sure that they are not an impostor account. Always verify that you're downloading from the original creator, any TS4SCRIPT file could be malicious. PACKAGE files should be safe as there are no known ways for them to cause issues to your computer.

The malware in this instance is only affecting users on Windows (not MacOS or Linux).

• If you want to verify if your computer is potentially infected, press the Windows+R keys and input %AppData%/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/UserData into the prompt, then press OK. If the opened folder contains any "Updater" then your computer is most likely infected.
• If your computer is infected or you believe that you might have downloaded and used a mod that contained malware, Overwolf/CurseForge developed a tool that helps remove this particular malware. Download the SimsVirusCleaner.exe application and run it. You should run an antivirus scan as well. Then proceed to change all of your passwords to all of your accounts on the internet.

You're most likely aware that downloading any files from the internet is never safe. There's no way to fully prevent this from happening, but you should at least be aware that mods are not an exception to this. More ways to prevent potential virus infections will be developed with time, which might be essential from now on. Please be careful about what you're downloading.