AntiSpyWare Solutions

One of the most devious forms of online fraud, not to mention parasitic behavior, is the corrupt, or rogue, security tools. Essentially, these programs try to trick you into believing that you have some kind of malware infection, often unrealistic in its severity, so that they can fleece you out of your money. Often they’re more expensive than the real thing, and they never fix your problems. Andromedaantivirus is a huge example, and will cripple your computer until it’s fixed.

It pretends to be a friendly antivirus program, but its roguish nature is apparent early on. It, like others of its type, will often be encountered at infected websites or while performing illegal downloads of pirated software, or in peer to peer file sharing communities. All moral and legal issues aside, users are most in danger of infection when browsing pornographic sites and illegally downloading software or media. In fact, these users are more often than not the target.

The other means of infection is by infected bogus anti-malware sites that host these bugs. Often, an infection from one of the previous means will redirect your browser to one of these sites. At any rate, the target of these sites is a user who is looking for a new security tool, whether coerced there by infection, or by simply shopping around. These sites will universally have a button for a free online scan or for a free trial version, which, when clicked, begin the infection.

Any way about it, the infection begins when you click on a button. Unfortunately, there’s no sure way of knowing that a button or site is infected until you actually are infected. Sometimes the website will not match the url in the address box, but not always. Downloading illegal materials is risky no matter what, so it should never be done. Also, many legitimate antispyware sites have the free online scan or free trial version option, so that’s not a sure sign.

What is certain about these infections is that a window pops up and begins counting “infected files” on your computer. This is a classic tactic of scamware where it actually counts your temporary files and tells you that they’re infected for the “shock and awe” effect.

Then it will tell you that it can clean up your computer if you pay for the full version. That will only cost you $50-80 or so. That is, assuming they don’t decide to charge you more just because they can. In fact, they may just clean out your account. In the bargain, you get a substandard antivirus program that mainly downloads more junk on your computer.

It will show you that you have the option of buying the product or not. However, it does seem that no matter how many times you say “No,” it just won’t go away. In fact, it won’t let you do anything else with your browser. Before you give in to this high pressure sales tactic, there is still one thing you can do. Shut your computer off and get some real security tools.