I have recently observed many PCs that have been infected by the trojan known as “Personal Antivirus.” Let me tell you, this seems like a nasty bug at first, but with the right tools and a cool head it’s rather simple to remove.

You will know if you have this trojan from a few simple key obervations. The first and most obvious is that the program will appear in your Start Menu as well as the Add/Remove Programs list. The second is that it will take over your Internet Explorer windows, and keep directing you to “about:blank.” The last is that you will notice a new popup near the clock on your machine that will continually warn you of viruses and spyware that are trying to download your passwords, or trying to control your machine.

The good news is that this evil little bug can be removed competely with two free programs. I recommend Spybot Search and Destroy as the first program to use. Simply install it, run the updates on it, and scan your machine. Spybot will remove a large amount of junk that is just sitting there. The second program recommend is called Malewarebytes. After you install this program, run the updates, and then do a full system scan. This application will get a few small files that spybot may have missed the first time around.

After you’ve completed these steps, all you need to do is restart your computer and you are back in business!

Chuck Lindblom

Basically, anything that is executable (able to run). You’re generally safe with picture files, text files, and the like. However, it still pays to scan first.

Here is a very short list of the most common file types to watch out for:

• exe
• zip
• scr
• vbs
• bat
• com
• pif
• asp
• doc
• xls

Now this doesn’t mean that if you get one of these files it’s automatically a virus. A “.zip” file may be nothing more than a set of compressed files your friend sent you to look at. A “doc” or “xls” file may simply be an MS Office file. It’s just that these file types could also be viruses.

A couple other virus tricks you need to be aware of:

1.) MS Office files can contain what are called “Macro Viruses.” Without getting into too much detail, these files can run a “macro” (a macro is a mini-program run from within another program) that can be as destructive as any “regular” virus. So, my advice on MS Office attachments is not to open them unless you are expecting them. If they just show up, verify with the sender first.

2.) You need to look out for extra extensions added to an attached file. For example, you may have something like “mypicture.jpg.vbs”. In fact, if you don’t have your computer set to view file extensions, it may just look like “mypicture.jpg” and omit that last “vbs” part, thus appearing to be just a jpg picture file, when actually its a Visual Basic Script file. If executed, it will happily infect your computer with a virus.

So, be careful out there!

Rob Ljunggren