Okay, so sometimes bad people make a virus that gradually takes over and blocks access to everything on your computer, and at the same time masquerades as a friendly free antivirus program you swear you must’ve installed earlier.
Elaborate designs for such things include blatantly infringing Microsoft copyright by sticking Windows logos all over the fake antivirus ‘dashboards’ and linking every button to a ‘premium content’ payment area that promises to unblock your computer (though it probably won’t…) for an extortionate fee.
So what does this have to do with the Royal Wedding? Well, when two posh people get married it generates a lot of interest so fake links are abound. Searches related to the wedding will generate fairly mediocre results but potentially link to pages that will download the ‘XPAntiVirus/Spyware/Malware 2000’ virus onto your computer. It looks like this by the way, and requires some registry rummaging in XP safe mode just to stop the annoying popups.
It’s a complete pain to remove, so early warnings are your best bet. Remember programs like Avast! And AVG generally have a website checking system that show the worst pages and tells you to avoid them before they eat your operating system.
Watch out for a ton of bad stuff out there, from searches related to wedding dresses to some sort of ‘Prince William Style Guide’, potentially a small printed sheet of A4 that says naught but ‘act like a bit of a plonker’.
High Treason at four, only at The Gadget Helpline.
ProTips found at GFI Labs Blog at Blogspot… mmmmrightabouthere:
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Tags: Bad, evil, fake antivirus, google, pootis, Royal Wedding, Search, virus, Warning
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