Malware - (Adware)

  • 22 December 2014
  • 3 replies
  • 13 views

Hi there
 
I have some instances of malware on my PC which Webroot doesn't appear to be picking up and therefore cant remove.'The offending items are: Superfish (2 items), Winmanager-2 (2 items)and employees-pc-monitor (37 items). The settings appear to be sut up OK. These are detected when I run WinZip Malware Protector for example. Any suggestions for removing them? Malware examples are superfish (2items), winmanager-2 (2items), employees-pc-monitor (37items)
 
Thanks
Spoonz

3 replies

Userlevel 7
Hi Spoonz
 
Welcome to the Community Forums.
 
From what you have posted, and following some quick research, what you seem to have fallen foul of is a combination what we call PUAs or Potentially Unwanted Applications, and web browser based adware.  To begin with whilst some of these might exhibt virus like qualities or attributes they are in fact not technically viruses.
 
As you have found, from what you write, PUAs are very annoying at best in that they cause pop-us, redirect your browser home page, and other behaviour that may slow down the computer and direct ads your way, but they are not actually doing anything bad like damaging files or stealing information. Often they are installed intentionally by you the user as browser add-ons for various tasks such as quick search tools. But they also come with the result of added annoying pop-ups and ads. Other times they 'piggy back' with other software that you installed, or try to 'sneak' onto your system entirely.
 
PUAs, as previously mentioned earlier, are not technically viruses and whilst WSA does detect and remove many PUA's, with more being added all the time WSA does not detect all of them.
 
A simple browser add-on with PUA behaviour that is easy to identify and easy to remove is not likely to be detected and removed by WSA. Those that are intentionally difficult to locate and remove are. Please see [user=4764][/user] has posted an Idea for Webroot to consider asking them to increase PUA detection.  The more users that need help removing a particular PUA the more likely and faster that PUA will be added to detection.
 
I hope the above is of assistance?
 
Regards, Baldrick
OK - thanks for that.
 
Spoonz
Userlevel 7
Hi Spoonz
 
You are most welcome.
 
Please let us know how this pans out for you, and if you have any further questions on this and/or another WSA-related subject please do not hesitate to come back here and ask...there should always be a Community member or two around who can help.
 
Regards, Baldrick

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