To my clients and anyone else reading this thread.

Question:

I have been getting a lot of questions from people about Spyware and how it affects your computer. I thought I would post my thoughts and usage with StopZilla and how successful it's been for me.

Usually, a PC user finds themselves clicking on a link inadvertently which installs a small but dangerous program on your machine. Once installed the program will start to display messages that your computer has a virus/worm/spyware or adware and that you need to "click here" to scan the machine or "click here" to purchase software to remove it. The problem is, that this software only really cares about the credit card information you input to purchase the said program to remove it. Furthermore, it will continue to hijack your internet browsers. To tell if your browser is hijacked with a like program usually after you are using your internet explorer browser for 5-20 seconds, it will keep displaying some fake info about the page being blocked. Lastly, clicking any of the buttons in internet explorer or the popups on your desktop only yield another installed instance of the program.

Workaround:

You can still navigate through the internet using the "InPrivate Browsing" which is a feature of Internet Explorer 8. This will allow you to avoid the program from forcing you into a blocked internet page. This DOES NOT solve the problem because the software is still on the PC. I recommend buying the StopZilla Software to clean it off. There are many variations of the Spyware/Adware/Worm programs and I have named a few below;

Antivir (This is the one that infected my machines)

AV

AV64

Antivirus’08

AntiVirus'09

AntiVirus360

These are to just name a FEW that are lurking out there. Here is a screenshot of my desktop with the two popups that I got after clicking a bad link in Facebook. Here, I had just begun to install StopZilla to remove the programs from my machine. You will also see the actual program shortcut that was placed on my desktop (Circled in RED) after the Spyware was installed.

Software Link: