Wednesday, February 2, 2011

how to remove Trojan.FakeAlert

You are happily using your PC to surf or read Email. Suddenly your screen is possessed with virus warnings and alerts and maybe a program appears to be scanning your PC or offering to scan for you.

What may have happened is an invasion by Trojan.FakeAlert or some variation of this Trojan horse malware.

What should you do?

What you should do is stop, don't click any buttons, don't agree to a scan. All of those scary messages might be false warnings from a nasty form of malware that pretends to be your own security software. It is a false alert, and anything you consent to or any click you make will likely further embed the malware into your system.

The best thing you can do is to shut your PC down, and get some help. See below for more symptoms and a plan of attack that you can follow to clean out this impostor if it is possessing your PC.


Don't let your PC go up in smoke...
Source: Photo by Sal LaRocca

Beware of Greeks (and also some geeks)

The Trojan Horse comes from Greek mythology. The story tells how the Greeks used a trick to enter the walled city of Troy. They built a large wooden horse with space inside for Greek warriors.

The Greeks rolled the wooden horse up to the city's gate and left it there.The Trojans took it as a gift, a peace offering, opened the gate, and rolled the horse inside. The Greeks came out of hiding and the battle was on!.

  • Greeks 1
  • Trojans 0

This led to a saying heard often, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" and the use of the Trojan horse phrase to describe somebody slipping in a surprise (often nasty) within an innocent appearing gift.

As Virgil once said, "Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts," From Virgil's Aeneid, book 2, 19 BC.

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