The Curse of Spyware – SUPERAntiSpyware
A friend recently dropped off a PC infected with some particularly nasty spyware infections. The usual SmitFraud, WinAntiVirus and Vundo stuff but this time, I couldn’t find anything that would shift it.
Unfortunately, the cause was a couple of pieces of so called AntiVirus and AntiSpyware software which were in themselves carriers and propagators of this rubbish. Same old story really, the PC user gets a pop-up telling them they are infected and guiding them to a site and some utility or other that will rid them of the problem…. for a fee of course, usually $29.99.
Symptoms on the machine were all too apparent; it was impossible to get on the web, at least to a site other than the utility seller’s and everything else was extremely slow. Eventually, I came across some forum discussions and a couple of them mentioned, the rather tacky sounding, “SUPERAntiSpyware” software. Cautiously, I grabbed a copy (it’s free for the basic version with manual updates), and ran it on the infected PC. Lo and behold, after about 15 minutes of scanning, it informed me of some 130 odd infection traces and offered to clean them off automatically. I accepted the offer and it got on with the job – result? one clean and uninfected PC!
I’m not suggesting for one minute that this will save every PC but it is certainly worth having in your toolbox. Strangely perhaps, the full version costs yes, you guessed it, $29.99! but this has full tech support and a decent user forum.
SUPERAntiSpyware is available at http://www.superantispyware.com/ – well worth a try…
Filed under: Scams, Software, Techie
