Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Attention Cybernauts and Web Surfers.....

If you're surfing the wild wild web, and suddenly a pop-up appears telling that "Windows Anti-virus 2012 has detected a problem and needs to scan your system" and then it tries to begin another operation, such as installing a file called "Setup.exe", just do a reboot or whatever to get the hell off that page immediately. It's a virus trying to take over your computer.

Your first clue is: there's no such thing as 'Windows Anti-virus 2012' - it's called Windows Defender. Your second clue is: No regular anti-virus has to install any "Setup.exe" before doing its thing. Your third clue is: When you try to get away from it, it tries to prevent that action and keep you connected to it. So do a reboot or shut down your computer or whatever you need to do to get clear of that before it can perform whatever it is trying to do. Then do a scan of your system with a reputable anti-virus like Avast 6.0 to make sure you're clean. And try to stay away from the webpage you were on when it showed up with those pop-ups.
 

2 comments:

  1. FYI Ray, this thing has been around for years... 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008... and people, unfortunately, continue to fall for it. Trying to get it off your computer is a good trick also.

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  2. Hi, Tommy -

    Yes, I Googled it after I got out of there, and you're right - it's been
    around for years. This was the first time I discovered it, though.

    Times like that, it's handy to have a shortcut on the desktop for a Reboot, and if you make one, include the dash plus lowercase 'f' to force-close anything that's open, so it happens as quickly as possible.

    If you find something that's got you locked out, there's a good little freebie program called
    MoveOnBoot from EMCO in Iceland
    that can remove locked files or folders during a Reboot, in between the times those would be
    in active RAM, so the system doesn't interfere with the operation. It works really well.
    Here's their web address =>

    http://emcosoftware.com/move-on-boot

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