Security Shield Extortion-ware Foiled!

Thanks for the heads up.

I use MS MSE and it seems to run fine; the only time things run slow is when it is doing an upgrade. I also run Malwarebytes, which is a free anti-malware program. It usually finds stuff that MSE misses.

I keep a copy of both on a flash drive, so I can run them in case the virus prevents me from connecting to the internet -- or forces me to 'accept' its use before it will let me connect.

I know what you mean, MS sneaks in crap all of the time to force you to use the latest edition of their products. I use Spybot Search and Destroy and lately the window notification spyware came up as problems. I didn't know for sure what to do, so I checked it out on a forum, and found out it was not needed, MS just wanted me to use their firewall and antivirus, which leaves a lot to desire. Spybot gives you the option of removing or not recognizing, so I removed and asked for no future recognition. It is gone.

So much MS intrusion.

Thanks, I will Bing it.

Hi SG,

My son's laptop received a similar annoying pop-up, which he kept deleting but it kept popping up. I went in and found a stinker file and deleted it, the popup disappeared for a few days but came back. I told him not to click on but he finally did, it also said his computer was infected (which it wasn't) and recommended scanning it with their software to get rid of it and offered an anti-virus program for $40. Despite my warning, be bought the stupid thing, which promptly scanned his computer, removed THEIR so-called viruses and provided medocre protection during the next year.

Every now and then he would come to me and say his computer was running kind of slow but told me to hold off on checking it. Eventually, after the year subscription was up, his computer was really running crappy. I took it over and ran anti-virus scans from an external CD and it found a total of 37 trojan and malware programs lurking. Some real good protection he bought there!

I managed to get rid of the viruses but, unfortunately, some parts of the OS couldn't be fixed (XP) so I ended up cleaning the OS out and reinstalling it and all of the software on his machine. After four days of labor, the danged thing is good again and AVAST is installed and doing a good job.

Moral of the story, these popups are almost aways junk and are to be avoided like the plague! Way too much of this crap going around!

Sounds like he fell for the "RansomWare".

Really bad news is that they probably sold his credit card info as well.

I think the moral of the story is windows is susceptible to infection from all sorts of malicious software, due to an inferior design

the fatal flaw is the registry is shared by every program & application, any program you install needs to have access to the registry

on an apple or linux system, every app makes a copy of these kinds of files & is more self contained. Should something become corrupted or otherwise break only that app will be nonfunctional, not your entire computer. the underlying architecture is not exposed in the same way.

It is pretty obvious that the viruses are caused by the vultures that offer to clean your computer for a hefty fee. Often, when a computer is infected you can reference the virus on the Internet and find a free cure - but not always. You may also read that the cure offered for the virus in your computer doesn't work and even using it may make the the situation worse - ie THE CURE IS WORSE THAN THE DISEAS !

Another difficulty is that you often need another computer to research the virus.

The other method I have succeeded with is to call the Anti-Virus company you are using - I have tried this twice with Norton and they cleaned my computer beautifully by remotely controlling it - taking about half to one hour.

The first time I was charged over a hundred dollars but this felt better than paying the Infector / Scammer and the second time free - which made me wonder why I was charged the first time but I was too busy to pursue.

A friend - ' computer EXPERT' recommended Viper Anti - Virus - I researched and it came up very good in reviews - got a free trial and then paid - cheap too. I still got a Virus - called Viper they cleaned it quickly and free.

Governments should investigate the Virus spreaders - should be easy by tracking payments - treat them as if they were spreading human Viruses then the infections would cease !

Stuart Fox

an easy method to keep windows boxes running good

use the windows automatic updates & stay current

use a firewall & any reputable virus/malware/trojan program

back your data up

even if you take precautions, the registry gets crudded up

do a full destructive restore every 6 months

if your computer comes with windows pre-installed run

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ to get rid of bloatware

Sounds like tracking is a great option, but what do you do when the internet leaves the border...

The size of the target is just as significant, you could use 98 and be a really large target too. When something becomes indefensible why use it on-line?

I didn't make the usual market share argument? :D

My computer at work got infected with something similar, I think it was called XP 2011 Spyware or something like that. MIS installed Spyware Doctor 2011 to get rid of it.