System Restore Fake Alert Virus

[cardiffsteve]

My BH had a Fake Alert virus on her PC today and have spent most of the day trying to get rid of it.
Dont know where it came from and was a b*gger to get rid of and it hides all your files and programs.

System Restore | Virus Solution and Removal

Please take care

It also tries to get you to purchase full version and once they get your credit card details they go on a spending spree

[Jeanied]

EEEW - how nasty - my preferred, helpful and sensible virus defence is f-secure. Not too expensive and very helpful.

[cardiffsteve]

Stupid thing is she has Mcafee on her PC so dont know how it got through!

[DGoulston]

Mcafee is my choice of virus protection, we had F-secure at my last job and I had to do some comparison and Mcafee uses less PC resources than F-secure, but that was 4 years ago so things could have changed.

Usually them fake virus alerts are browser based, and clicking on them causes your pc to be infected (as by clicking you have given it permission basically) , but usually they do not cause much damage at first, as they are more a ploy to get you to buy some useless virus ridden software, as you mentioned.

virus developers are cleaver and always changing their viruses to beat virus scanners, so you will never stop them all, and as these ones are usually caused by an accidental click (usually on a fake close button on the webpage) it is hard to stop them!

Darren

[Florence Fennel]

Hope you've got it sorted Steve. These things seem to accelerate near Yule. I've got McA as well, but have had no problems in the last few years. Hope that's not tempting fate.

[DGoulston]

A note for people with McAfee.

When it comes to renewal time, NEVER auto renew,
If you call them up they will always give you the renewal for at least 1/2 price.
I got the 3 user licence for £30 on renewal this year.

Darren

[cardiffsteve]

Thats what i did last year.
Instead of £90 i paid about £40

[zazen999]

My sensible choice of virus protection is my Mac.

[smallblueplanet]

You can get the excellent anti-virus prog Avast free (for personal use) - highly recommended...

avast! Free Antivirus - Download Software for Virus Protection

[DGoulston]

You can get the excellent anti-virus prog Avast free (for personal use) - highly recommended...

avast! Free Antivirus - Download Software for Virus Protection

I used to like Avast, but had it on my sisters (very old PC) up until about a few months ago, and she got a big virus that near killed her system, and she is a very basic browser. so does not venture to far into the unknown lol..

Now I let her have 1 of my licences for McAfee. at the end of the day, its as they say. You get what you pay for!


As an IT Profession, From my point of view the only two contenders for good virus protection is Mcafee and f-secure.
Would not touch Norton with a barge pole (mainly because I do not own a barge pole or a barge)

Darren.

[oldie]

My anti-virus is called Linux.

[cardiffsteve]

Always a bit suspicious of free software but i'm sure its fine

[oldie]

Hardly suspicious when even microsoft use it on servers, as do many internet service providers and Pixar studios.

[cardiffsteve]

Sorry not on about Linux but AVG/Avast

Wanted to try Linux on my laptop and tried to gett to boot either to Linux or Windoze but scrwed up both, Doh!

[oldie]

Understood. Avg has not had the best reports recently although Avast still gets good ones. Kaspersky used to get top billing and some banks give it to online customers but I think BitDefender got a better rating in the last report I read.