The Pharmer in the Dell: Redux Ten years ago, in 2005, Dell tried sneaking malware/PUPs onto their computers and we wrote it up and called them out. In 2012 we republished the article ( with some changes ) because Dell again tried to trick consumers into purchasing computers with pre-installed malware and/or PUPs. Well, the more things change, the… Read More »
Don’t Let This Fake Flash Player Update Fool You If you see this, then you could be in big trouble: It looks real but it is not. I was reading an article on Reuters and suddenly this appeared out of nowhere. This is a fake. It’s not an Adobe Flash Player update at all – it’s malware. This… Read More »
Emsisoft Wins Again We’ve been recommending Emsisoft for quite a while now. After Microsoft Security Essentials started going down hill and Malwarebytes decided to ignore many PUPs, we got busy and started evaluating security products. What we were looking for was not a security suite with all kinds of useless stuff (Spam Blockers, site raters, etc.) but a… Read More »
What are PUPs? PUPs are not things; PUPs is an acronym for Potentially Unwanted Programs. It really should be PUS, Potentially Unwanted Software – but PUS doesn’t sound very nice – though PUS might be closer to what you get when you install PUPs (or malware) on your computer. PUPs are what antivirus/antimalware companies call some malware so… Read More »
Stop: Serious security threats have been detected on your computer I was browsing through some freeware sites the other day (and I’m sorry I can’t remember exactly which one) and I saw the warning below appear. It had my real IP address and my ISP. I wondered how many people have been duped by this advertisement disguised as… Read More »
Who is the Worst: The Malware Miscreants or the Companies Who Make False Promises? It’s a shame that we all have to be so careful when we download or even just browse the Web these days. The more mature the Internet gets the more sophisticated the tricks become. And it’s bad enough when criminals and miscreants posing as… Read More »