Monday Peeve: Annoying Marketing Tactics
Mood
Angry
Two Words: Antivirus 2008.
So many people I know have been affected by this virus and the way that it is implemented and done is so incredibly sleazy and takes horrible advantage of people that only use computers and don't know them. If you don't know what this is, you are incredibly lucky (and probably have a good ad blocker).
Antivirus 2008 is a "product" that advertises itself through pop ups on sleazy websites. It looks like a normal windows xp type window that is advising you that there is a problem with your system. It tells you that you have a virus and they have detected it and to click here to get it taken care of. It's fairly obvious that this is totally bogus, if you take a moment to consider how your computer works.
How long does it take a regular antivirus program to scan your computer? 10 minutes? 20 minutes? 30 minutes? How long does it take this totally bogus ad to tell you that you have a virus? What? In the time it takes to load a page? Really? What makes you think, for even a second, that it isn't totally lying to you then? Though, the fact of the matter is, I know that people do think the pop up tells them the truth and click on it and download this software to their computer. You've just opened a big can of worms.
So, next the virus installs itself. It is a virus, or more specifically malware. AVG, Avast and Computer Associates can (usually) all pick it up. The .exe for the virus is constantly updated though and all three main antivirus programs are struggling to keep up. Sometimes it does not detect it, though often an adaware or spyware program will, to little effect, as they can't uninstall it.
What does this virus do? Essentially it just seems to be a bloated trojan that you can't uninstall through conventional means, there is generally a keylogger involved as well so that when you give them your credit card number it can send it off to them since this software is in no way legal or accredited. Lovely. Don't make any credit card purchases using your computer until this is out of your system.
How do I get this damn thing off? The way they want you to get it off is by paying them to take it off. This is why I am labeling this as a market tactic. I bet they are making a fortune right now off of this with all those stolen credit card numbers. The better way leaves you with two options. One, you do this yourself. Two, you take it into a shop and have a professional do it for you.
So, you want to try and uninstall this monster by yourself.
Step One, if you have AVG, Avast or Computer Associates, run an update on it and then run a full scan. If you have done this and it hasn't found Antivirus 2008 wait an hour, run an update and do it again. If it still hasn't found it skip to Step Three. If it picks it up you may be lucky and get that virus out of there on your first go. Reboot and run the scan again, full scan. Then run any adaware type program such as Adaware and/or Spybot. If it's truly gone then go to Step Four.
Step Two, if you have crap like Norton or McAfee in your system, uninstall it. It's crap. You can reinstall it later if you really feel strongly about having crap on your system but for now we need to take the kid gloves off and use some real software to fix this problem, ok? Install any of the three above antivirus programs I mentioned, two are free for personal use, one has a free trial so all three will work for our purposes. Once it's installed, update it to the latest version and run a full scan. If you have done this and it hasn't found Antivirus 2008 wait an hour, run an update and do it again. If it still hasn't found it skip to Step Three. If it picks it up you may be lucky and get that virus out of there on your first go. Reboot and run the scan again, full scan. Then run any adaware type program such as Adaware and/or Spybot. If it's truly gone then go to Step Four.
Step Three, the virus scanner didn't pick it up? You must have a very recent copy of the virus. Try using Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware and this guide. Reboot and run the antivirus scan again, full scan. Then run any adaware type program such as Adaware and/or Spybot. If it's truly gone then go to Step Four.
Step Four, preventive measures. Finally, install Firefox along with a decent Adblocker and delete the IE icon from your desktop, quick launch bar, etc. That way there is no chance that any user of your computer will ever do anything like that ever again. If it happened once, it will happen again, spammers, scammers, and worse are getting better and better at tricking the average computer user into compromising their passwords, their system and their pocket book. You need to get better too and having none of their stuff ever display for you in the first place works to that end.
The best way to avoid an annoying marketing tactic is to not give it a chance to market to you in the first place.
This was a participation in Monday Peeves.
Posted by Bitsy at 08:40 PM Comments
Hello. And Bye.
Posted by: XRumerTest on March 3, 2010 12:05 PM
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