Beware: AV Security Systems Looks Real But Is A Virus

WARNING to all of you with computers hooked to the internet. My sister and her husband on their computer and I on mine were attacked over the weekend by a virus called the AV Security System. It gets in and blocked everything making it virtually impossible to remove. I don't know if it came in in an email, or got around my firewall somehow. If you google the name you'll see that it's a hack created to look like a real program, that claims your computer is under attack by dozens of virus' and worms, and demands something like 60-70 dollars, but according to what I read it takes your money, gives you nothing, and to add insult to injury screws up your computer anyway. In both cases from what they told me, and my experience, it keeps you from accessing your virus software, your control panel, your registry, in my case I downloaded the same software they used to get rid of it, called AVG, and a couple others, and it allowed the downloads but blocked the installation, the gist is it blocks any way to get rid of it. It reloaded everytime you'd reboot, and kept popping up basically saying buy me, over and over whether connected to the web or not, also it kept opening web pages to porno sites when connected to the web. Very disconcerting and annoying. Neither of us paid, from what they said they disconnected their high speed connection, and that allowed the virus software to work and it removed the AV Security. In my case my virus software was blocked, and installing the dowloads was blocked, I was about to wipe the drive and reload the operating system, when I came across instructions, put it in safe mode and work through it that way, didn't work... Then I had a thought, according to what I'd read it also blocked or could infect system restore, but out of options I used system restore and set it back two days. Miracle of miracles it worked, I rebooted and it didn't show up. Since then I've been running all the virus software I've got and boosted the firewall. As of 3am it was gone. The point is this is a major PITA but if you get it it can be dealt with, just takes time and patience.

Lee Murray