The dreaded fake anti virus virus!

Now I get really annoyed at this virus/malware!! I go to so many people who have been the victim of this mindless malware. 


How this virus, malware - pain in the bum ware what ever you want to call it works is this. Your surfing away and you navigate to a site, up pops a message saying something along the lines of " Your computer is at risk, let me run a free scan to help you with that" or something of a similar nature. You click on the ok button BANG you've done it, let it on your machine. By clicking on the pop up you have given it permission to install on your machine, hence the AntiVirus companies of the world struggle to stop it as YOU gave it permission!!! 


If this pops up, right click your start bar, open task manager and kill the browser process you are using, so if it's Internet Explorer find the iexplore.exe in the list click it and end now. If its chrome, find chrome.exe and end it now. All else fails turn the machine off!


The virus is pure evil, once on it changes your browser settings to send you to their web site so you can have your credit card details stolen and even if you do "buy" it it still doesn't go away! They just buy something nice for themselves using your credit card details!


If you do happen to get attacked by it and are in a pickle, there are various programs to remove it, one I have seen is Super AntiSpyware - which is free for home use. You would of course have to put it on a memory stick and run it from there once logged in. But the neat thing about that program is it uses a strange name for its program so sas1234.com etc which is actually the .exe of the program so it usually runs ok as the virus is designed to kill. exe programs. Hence why you cant open task manager or any other .exe as it says they are the virus, when we know they are not!


Once removed make sure you run a full anti virus check with what ever program you are using to make sure its not hiding any where. 
Microsoft also do the Malicious Software Removal Tool - although I have found this hit and miss with regards to finding them - you MUST run a full scan with this, quick scan finds nothing most of the time! Full scan can also take hours, so be prepared!


Bodtree Systems - Catherine