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| Personal Antivirus Fake Infection |
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| Written by Bob Williams |
| Monday, 19 October 2009 05:01 |
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Personal Antivirus is a fake or 'rogue' program which should be removed from your computer. Its purpose is to scare you into buying its full version, which is nothing more than a useless peice of software with no ability to find or removal any real virus infections. Personal Antivirus will try to scare you by using popups and various fake system warnings. The Personal Antivirus infection will slow your PC's performance considerably. 1.Personal Antivirus contains keylogging functionality which copies all of the things that you type into your keyboard and makes this information available to the nasty authors of this virus. As you can imagine, this raw data can be used to breach your privacy and steal from you. 2. You will notice official looking warnings and notifications telling you to buy Personal Antivirus. They are of course fake. 3.Frequent fake warnings will appear warning of other security problems on your computer. These make it difficult to get on with your own work as they reappear and are highly persistent. You should not interact with these messages as they are designed to bring you to a purchase page or download more infections. 4.You might notice unusual shortcuts on your desktop that were not there before. 5.Personal Antivirus attempts to make your browser divert to strange sponsored listings instead of genuine webpages. Personal Antivirus should be removed immediately from your computer. Follow the removal guide below and you won't break into a sweat! Personal Antivirus is a resistant virus. It won't just leave your computer if you ask it to (through the normal uninstall process in Add/Remove Programs). Manual removal is a challenge since the infection builds its new home in many different locations on your hard drive. Unless you are very experienced at virus removal, it is likely that you will leave some of the associated files and registry keys behind that will reinstall the infection at a later date ('reinfectors'). Bearing all of this in mind, for the vast majority of computer users, an automatic removal tool will be the best option. Malwarebytes is a very effective and trusted malware removal program. Download and install the free version of this software. Run the 'Quick Scan'. This will only take about 10 minutes or so & will automatically remove the Personal Antivirus infection. It is likely that if Personal AntiVirus was on your computer, other infections will have crept in as well. It would be wise to follow up the Malwarebytes scan with a full scan using your own existing AntiVirus software. Prevent Future Infections 1. Keep your version of Windows up to date. Make sure that Automatic Updates is enabled on your computer and is scheduled for a realistic time when you are likely to be online. Dont forget to update other software to prevent hackers exploiting old versions. 2.Get some decent Antivirus and AntiSpyware software installed. The free alternatives are struggling to fight against these new stronger viruses. 3.Alter your browsing habits if necessary! Most virus infections hide out in pornography and illegal file sharing websites. Personal Antivirus is a good example of a new generation of virus infections that don't choose to hide deep in your system, but instead come out in the open and try and scare the computer user into spending money on a fake removal tool. Malwarebytes will remove this infection quite easily and won't cost you a penny, however you should follow this up with a more indepth virus scan and take preventative steps to avoid further similar infections! Read more on the Personal Antivirus infection on http://www.personalantivirus.org.uk About the Author: Want to find out more about Personal Antivirus, then visit Bob Williams's site on Personal Antivirus Removal. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites                             |