Malware

What is malware?

Malware is unwanted software that presents ads or does things to or in your system that you don’t want. Malware is not considered viruses because they don’t do the same things as viruses, like replicate or destroy files. The most common malware can come in the form of unwanted ads appearing on your screen, some times even when you are not on the internet. Because malware is not viral it is generally not detected by anti virus software, however there are programs that will detect it and in most cases remove it. Beware of free ad removers! In many cases of free downloaded ad removers, you may find after installing you get even more ads than before. Many less than respectable ad sites will actually spoof folks into downloading a piece of software claiming to remove ads, but actually load more in. This spoofing can sometimes come in the form of a banner ad with an X box in the upper right hand corner of the window, this X box appears to be an active X box to close the window, but in reality when you click on it to close it does the very thing you didn’t want it to do that being it’s not a genuine close box, it’s part of the ad itself. When you click on this X box to close, many times it will close the box, but you have invited something else into your system. The best way to avoid clicking in an ad when it appears is to use the <Alt> F4 to close the window without activating the ad. One of the best ways to prevent ads from clogging up your system is to have a good understanding of what you are clicking on and have a good ad blocker of some kind like a firewall. Adware can also be automatically installed along with some desirable software you may have purchased or downloaded. Always select “Custom” when it comes to installing software versus “Express” or “Automatic”. When you do a custom install, the install wizard will provide the opportunity to deselect options you don’t want. Beware though, by deselecting some options you may render other parts inoperable.

Our advice to you is “Don’t trust everything you see on the web” and “don’t trust all downloads to be virus or malware free”.