A few weeks back my computer got infected with AV Care. AV Care is a bogus anti virus program that performs a bogus virus scan of your computer. After the bogus virus scan it give you a report that your computer is infected and for AV Care to remove it you must pay or buy it.
I don’t know how AV Care got installed but what I do know is that my wife was the last person who used my computer. She might have clicked a link that installed AV Care without her knowing it. Well, she is not really that computer or internet savvy. She only uses a computer to check her Yahoo Mail and her Friendster account.
When I was back to using my computer, I noticed this shield icon in my task bar. I don’t remember seeing it before so I moused over it and it said AV Care. I double clicked it and it performed a virus scan of my computer.
Virus protection is a big concern of mine since I’m online almost 24 hours a day and because I was unfamiliar with AV Care I did some Googling where I found out that it was a bogus anti virus program. I immediately uninstalled it but for some reason my computer’s performance went downhill. It became very, very slow and it was running multiple instances or process of Google Update.
Thinking that I might have triggered a trojan or something, I spent hours trying to fix my computer but with no success so I did the next best thing and that was to format and reinstall everything. With a fresh windows install, everything was running perfectly again.
Tags: anti-virus, av care, friendster, google update, trojan, virus, virus protection, yahoo mail
I had a similar experience, and up to this moment, I still have a fear that my computer will be infected again. Thankfully, I’ve recently installed a legitimate anti-virus program, and it has (so far) repelled various attempts to infect my computer.
A tip: don’t display the URL of the site that leads you to the bogus anti-virus program. If you do, it will invite the users/followers/readers of this blog to click on that said link, and have the same virus that you’ve recently encountered.
i have same problem with same virus (i think). someone can give me some solution how i can fix this problem. i don’t want format my computer because have many data not backup. someone can help me…
faiz, i’m not expert but what i did is i saved my file and re-format that our IT recommented to me before, take care and good luck to you..