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#1
Malware Cleaner -- Misleading (false) application
Hi guys
One of my pet hates are those programs that you can download from the Net (such as Scan for Drivers / Registry cleaners) etc etc as even if they don't contain viruses etc are nothing more than "Sneakware". What happens is that the system does the initial scan and the poinst you to a "paid for" or "upgrade" site to actually perform the upgrade / registry cleansing stuff etc.
I've been looking at a collegues computer (bored out of my mind at the moment ) and he'd been running one of these horrible little programs called Malware Cleaner).
This is a NASTY cheat -- it reports all sorts of malware / spyware that actually DOESN'T exist on his machine - I tested this with a 100% clean install of the W7 BETA 7000 which came from the Microsoft site, having first FULL formatted the disk, wrote Binary zeros on every sector and re-installed the brand new MBR. He'd have probably gone out and bought an expensive "Malware" cleaner package.
So
1) DO NOT USE ANY OF THESE ONLINE PROGRAMS THAT DETECT DRIVERS/ CLEAN REGISTRIES etc etc whilst you are actually ONLINE.
2) DON'T BUY ANYTHING RECOMMENDED BY THESE SITES.
Now I'm not particularly keen on AV software in any case but if you use it DO know what you are doing and always check on "False Positives" before installing / uninstalling anything.
So far the security in W7 seems to be holding up but if you let stuff execute via a Browser then "all bets are off".
Cheers
Jimbo