I was given my first laptop as birthday present a week ago. It was a Lenovo sending from my grandparents. I’ve always heard that it is pretty dangerous out there on the internet. Your computer and personal data can be damaged by any kind of virus from the network. In order to prevent this from happening, I searched online and have installed couple antivirus programs. They were performing well till I got a new one. It was called Windows Virtual Security. But I couldn’t remember I had downloaded this software into my laptop. It showed up as an antivirus tool so I didn’t pay enough attention to it until it started to interrupt me from using the computer.
The more virus protection tools I have, the safer my laptop will be. That was what I thought to myself. This Windows Virtual Security first showed up on my computer as a legitimate program. But every time it ran a scan through my computer, it stated that there were many viruses and errors inside the laptop. I was curious one time as my other 2 virus tools did not catch any problems. Then all of a sudden, there were lots of security warnings popping up constantly. I couldn’t close them all at one time. And it was really annoying since they totally interrupted me while I was trying to surf the Internet for some solutions. After failing to do that, I decided to stop this constant popping and delete all the detected problems through the program itself. But then it asked me to sign up for its registered version first. I had to pay for it! That was when I felt suspected. I know sometimes we have to pay for some programs online to get their services. But I didn’t download this Windows Virtual Security thing. Or maybe I accidentally installed it while I was installing other programs which I could not know. So basically, I did not want this program in my laptop, neither did I want to pay for its registered version.
Fortunately I have got another computer which is a home desktop. So I used it to do some online researches to make sure that I pay for the right thing if I want to. But to my surprise, this software turned out to be a total scam! Here’s the passage I’ve read. It was created by people who wanted money from us without permission! All the detected problems by it were just unreal. It just tried to deceive you that your computer had a lot of problems. And when you failed to delete all that after trying many methods, it would just show up and promise that it could help you get rid of all the potential viruses and provide your computer an overall protection from then on. But all you needed to do first is to sign up and pay. THE WORST EVER is that, according to my reading, even if you don’t pay for this scam program, it can still collect your personal information to make you loss properties if you cannot manage to uninstall it in time!
So I went ahead searching online for more information on how to get rid of this program. I found another helpful page here. It turned out that I could not remove this program by any of my antivirus tools. Manual removal is the only way to completely delete it from my laptop. So I tried carefully to follow the steps given in the passage. It did give specific steps on the whole process. And even if I could not delete it by myself, I could get helps online from PC experts.
What I have learned from this experience, as also told by IT guys, that there isn’t a perfect antivirus program for every kind of virus from the Internet. Besides, viruses can be created every single minute. And not every “legitimate” software is actually authorized. You should be careful when getting unknown programs in your computer because they may not be as friendly as you think they are.
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