pc booster pop up saying I have a Trojan virus

  • 31 October 2014
  • 1 reply
  • 31 views

I keep getting a popup and/or a web page that is from pcbooster saying 'Dear MediaCom User, you may have a Trojan virus.  Please contact (844 number listed) to talk to a windows certified technician'.  I always run my webroot scan and it never shows any threats.  I have no clue what pcbooster is but possibly may have downloaded something this past weekend while trying to fix some programs on my computer.  I've gone through my add/uninstall programs and don't see anything similar to this name.  I don't trust random numbers that appear on my computer.  Any thoughts?  Thank you!

1 reply

Userlevel 7
Hello Sarah83, welcome to the Community!
 
What you are seeing and describing is what we on the Community refer to as a PUA. (Potentially Unwanted Application)These are very annoying at best in that they cause pop-us, redirect your browser home page, and other behavior 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.
 
WSA does detect and remove many PUA's, and more are being added, but WSA does not detect all of them. A simple browser add-on with PUA behavior 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 THIS LINK for more information regarding Webroot's stance on these annoying programs.
 
The best thing to do is to submit a Trouble Ticket and ask Webroot Support to take a look and remove these for you.  There is NO CHARGE for this for valid WSA license holder.
 
Also, we have had a lot of discussion regarding these recently, and I have 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 this helps!

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