Beware of Trojans-AntivirusLive

A small voluntary sector organisation has been attacked by a nasty Virus. The virus, in the form of a Trojan (a piece of software pretending to be one thing whilst infecting your computer) The Trojan offers to remove spyware and viruses but once you click run your system is compromised.

AntivirusLive displays fake security alerts about security threats and infections. It will also block most other programs, especially anti-virus software, to protect itself from being deleted. You will see the "Application can not be executed" warning when you launch applications. AntivirusLive will also change your settings in Internet Explorer and will block security and antivirus websites. It may even redirect you to porn sites.

AntivirusLive tries to trick you into buying the program.

The misleading programme will pretend to scan your computer and report some scare stories that only Antivirus Live can clear. You are then invited to buy the programme to clear the problems it has made up. Do not part with your credit card details!

Antivirus Live will pretend to be Windows Security Center and will report that no anti-virus software was found on your computer. It will then suggest you to active Antivirus Live in order to protect your computer. Microsoft does not promote any particular anti-virus software.

What can you do? - safeguards

Make sure you have at least two browsers available on your computer,
• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Opera
Trojans require an invitation to run on your computer so be wary of any link from a site you don't trust, this includes links in emails and links on social networking sites such as FaceBook and Twitter. If an offer seems to be too good to be true it is.

Keep your firewalls and antivirus software in place. (though if you downloaded the programme past the safeguards then - OOPs)

What can you do? Removal

Fire up your browser - NOT Internet Explorer and enter the name of the programme into your search engine.

When you follow the links - read the page thoroughly and print it out - for some severe infections you may need to do this from another computer.

Check a few sites out and read any comments that people have posted.

Follow the instructions - typically it will take a few hours to clean a computer.

What next

Well my guess is that you will now remember to back up all your important files and photographs.

Check that the anti virus software is running and is up to date

Delete any suspect emails , delete your web history

Promise you will not follow spurious links etc