Your computer is infected

Your computer is infected!

The market for computer security solutions today is massive and for a large part driven by peoples fear not only of computer viruses in general, but fear from having private data stolen by spyware. That fear is well justified, however, fear is also a very motivating factor when it comes to shelling out money for something to alleviate a certain fear and lots of unscrupulous people take advantage of this.

Let me elaborate on this for a moment. A small message balloon popping up in the corner of your screen saying “Your computer has been infected” has almost become synonymous with what is known as fake spyware removal or fake anti spyware, because it is a message designed so it looks exactly like it is coming from Windows itself thereby looking more genuine.

Here are a couple of examples of the “Your computer is infected” message:

Purposes of “Your computer is infected” spyware

The people who create this kind of spyware usually have one of the following two motives and the message itself should never be trusted. If the unsuspecting user clicks the message and follows the instructions given, they only get into more trouble than they already are.

• Steal your money.
  This is in many cases the main objective of the popup message – trying to scare people into buying a fake spyware removal program and has also given this kind of software the name RansomWare, because if you believe the message to be real you are automatically taken hostage by the situation and ready to pay to get out of it. Never give in to the demands.
• Add more spyware to your system.
  This is another purpose of the “Your computer is infected” spyware. If you click the balloon and do as the program instructs, it will install more spyware on your computer, which in turn will attempt to steal more information from you. Spyware goes for anything from bank account numbers to user ids or simply detecting your search habits in order to spam you with targeted ads (adware).

As I have described above fake spyware removal software often disguises itself so it looks like Windows has detected spyware infection or the message comes from Windows Defender. Unfortunately you can also come across this simply by surfing the Internet and visiting websites, that have either been infected or sites the deliberately run malicious scripts. Those sites generate “Your computer has been infected” popup that also look genuine and very convincing. Here are a couple of examples of rogue spyware removal programs like that:

Both the programs SlimShield and Windows Antivirus 2008 are fake - known as rogue spyware removal programs. They should never be installed.

How to handle the “Your computer is infected” popup

Let me start by saying that in most cases you don’t need to worry about anything, because as I have explained the warning is fake. Especially if you already have a computer security solution from a renowned vendor installed. If you are in doubt whether you are getting a fake or a genuine spyware warning, simply run a full system scan with your own spyware removal program. The important thing here is to never ever click the warning and let it do anything. Trust your own software only.

If you don’t already have a spyware removal program installed you should get one immediately. I can pretty much guarantee that you will eventually get tons of spyware and computer viruses if you don’t have any protection at all. ESET offers one of the best security solutions currently on the market and you get a 30 day free trial period with them as well. Simply click below to visit their website.