In the past, we discussed rogue anti-virus programs.  They are still around.  They call themselves things like “Antivirus 2014.”  I’m frequently asked why, if there is an internet security program installed on the computer, do these things keep showing up?  Well, they are not technically a virus.  Many are programs created with Flash and act like a movie playing.  The problem is it’s a movie that you can’t turn off!  No matter how many times you click on the “X” the windows keep appearing.  Some versions open 10 or more windows in a really short time.  Annoying, to say the least.

While many of these programs aren’t harmful (they aren’t busy deleting data), they can ruin your day and make your computer useless—they just fill up the screen and try to get you to pay money to get them to go away.  They can also prevent you from navigating to an antivirus site where you might find a utility to remove them.  When you try to access one of the many antivirus companies’ sites, you’ll be blocked.

There are a number of ways to get this junk to go away, but ror right now, restarting the computer in safe mode and doing a system restore may help.  Once you do the restore, run MalwareBytes (you can get it from www.malwarebytes.org).  This should pick up the bad stuff.  If you don’t scan for malware, you will probably find yourself right back where you were at the beginning of the day. If this procedure makes you uncomfortable, just give us a call and we can assist you.