Spyware, Malware…Don’t Trust Your Antivirus Program

Antivirus vendors make healthy amounts of money off selling their software and the updates that make it useful. Unfortunately, the false sense of security that comes from these applications means that many are surprised when their system is stricken with the latest spyware.

Any program that installs itself surreptitiously on your system, knocks out your antivirus program and proceeds to make your system unusable seems like a virus to me. But the major players like Symantec and McAfee didn’t see it that way. For them, it was an up-sell that allows them to tack on another $10-30 over the price of their standard antivirus offering and help offset the fact that these vendors had to purchase other companies to incorporate their malware protection technology.

The sheer number of malware infections has forced some like Symantec to change their course, but the protection is not what you’d expect. We work on more systems that were “protected” than not. In some cases, the antivirus program was humming along undisturbed while the system was throwing up ads left and right.

We’ve found one consistently effective tool for scanning your system: Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (see CNET’s video review below). It’s the only program that we’ve seen capable of cleaning up infections like Antivirus 2009.