Thursday, February 12, 2009

Guido Reni Archangel Michael

While researching an antivirus article here at Maximum PC, we noticed something very curious: a Google AdWords link called “Antivirus xp 2008,” which led to the url “antivirus-world-2009.com.” (Don't go So why is Google advertising for it? It’s not exactly tough to figure out that the site is hosting the virus; the link is called “the link, particularly if they were already searching for antivirus software.there)Anyone who’s been paying attention during the last year or so know that "Antivirus xp 2008" is the name of one of the most widespread and obnoxious bits of malware floating around the internet. It hides itself in your system and launches a bogus antivirus program at intervals to warn you that you’ve got spyware and trojans and the sky is falling. Then, it recommends that you buy the pro version of the program, which presumably also does nothing except rip you off. The virus is frequently updated to evade malware removal tools, and is just generally a pain. antivirus xp 2008” after all. Well, maybe we should say that it’s not tough for users like us to figure out that it’s a virus—we suspect that less-experienced surfers (our moms, for instance) could very easily be duped into clicking

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