Ricky Says

Last year I trashed on Norton because it failed to protect my home computers from Malware Alarm, and instead gave props to Panda Antivirus.

A rep from Norton reached out to me a couple weeks ago, and asked if I'd give them a second chance with their new flagship program Norton 360. He said they'd greatly improved their focus on virus protection, and was confident that they'd addressed the issues I raised in my earlier review.

I'm all about second chances, so I downloaded and installed Norton 360 on both of my home computers - one that's used primarily by my kids upstairs for games, and my wife's laptop that she uses for email, shopping online, and of course Facebook. My Panda subscription had expired, so these machines had been running unprotected for a while. I was getting some windows error popups every time I started the kids computers - indicating that a file or memory address could not be accessed, and who knows what else had snuck onto those machines while browsing the web and playing online games (my kids tend to just click "Ok" whenever they see popups, a habit I'm trying to get them to stop).

After installing Norton, which includes a license for up to 3 computers, I ran a full scan to check for viruses, spyware, tracking cookies, malware - the works.

It turned out I had 4 trojan horse viruses lurking on my system, which Norton was able to detect and delete. Trojans are dangerous viruses that work secretly in the background to download and run fraudulent security tools, keyloggers, adware, web browser toolbars and other malicious applications.

Question: Can malware or spyware do any real harm to my computer, or is it all just a bunch of hype?

Answer: Yes, malware, spyware, and adware can wreak havoc on your computer - from capturing financial account information, using your computer to make expensive phone calls or send spam emails, keeping you from using your web browser due to obnoxious (and fake) security warning popups, and even placing hard core porn links on your desktop.

I used to naively think that malware was just a minor but harmless annoyance, or that spyware was limited to just reporting my online preferences much like a grocery card at Safeway. That was until my home computers became infected with MalwareAlarm and I was unable to use my web browsers altogether, due to the constant popups claiming I needed to send this company money to get rid of the security popups.

More recently I turned off my anti-spyware software for a couple of days to troubleshoot some performance issues, and my system was almost immediately infected with IEMonster and another nasty adware infection called zlob.PornAdvertiser (and not from visiting any questionable or adult-related websites either).

Question: I have paid for the full version of Malware Alarm, but now I can't find the software on my PC. I paid $40 for it - can I use it or get my money back?

Answer: I'm sorry to be the one to break the bad news to you, but you've actually sent your money to the very malware program that you were trying to remove from your system. You're not alone either - this is an extremely manipulative and invasive infection that convinces a lot of people to send in their money in hopes of getting rid of MalwareAlarm, only to find that they've been swindled.

The good news is that you can effectively get rid of MalwareAlarm from your system using a couple programs that have proven to completely remove Malware Alarm. Read on to learn more about MalwareAlarm and the programs that will remove malware from your computer, and that will also prevent malware from infecting your system in the future.

MalwareAlarm is a program that falsely claims to be an anti-spyware application that will scan for and remove spyware from users' computers. It attempts to trick or pressure users into purchasing the program by presenting the user with intrusive, deceptive warnings and/or false, misleading scan results.

My home computer systems were both recently infected by the MalwareAlarm program, and I captured screen shots as it attacked my system - to show you the kind of grief this program can inflict, and also to demonstrate how to clean your system of malware, spyware, and adware.

By the time you finish reading this, you should be able to easily recognize when malware has attacked your system, and will know how to remove it and other threats from your computer.

Here's my story:

I do a lot of blogging and writing articles for this web site, and I was almost finished with one particular article after spending about an hour tweaking it to my liking. Little did I know at the time that I would soon lose all that work, and would find myself in a serious battle to regain control of my system.

I pressed the Submit button on my post, and all hell broke loose!

First I got a popup notification window in Internet Explorer (even though I have popups disabled), asking me if I wanted to download MalwareAlarm for free, to check if my system has been infected with Viruses, Adware or Spyware.