So you've read the End-user Licence Agreements for every other piece of
software and only agreed to the ones that don't claim some rights over your
content? Do you have ANYTHING installed on your computer? :-)
Anyway there's an option in MS Security Essentials to prevent it phoning
back home, and, even if you agree, you can inspect what it sends back.
Jez
*This email was scanned by Microsoft, Google, NSA, GCHQ, Prism, Echelon,
Uncle Tom Cobley... and my wife, They're all pretty sure it's innocuous.*
On 11 November 2013 13:30, Brian Swale <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Mike L ( and others commented) wrote
> >
> > Agreed. I discarded Avast several years ago...
> > Ditto
> > Then install MS Security Essentials instead.
> > Yep
>
> Thanks for the advice. I followed it in part ....
> This part had an unexpected bonus.
>
> In the extended family I am now part of is the 43 yo son who has mental
> abilities severely
> constrained at times due to being a survivor of 3 x
> meningococcal-encephalitis, plus head
> and body injuries from assaults by crooked police and others.
> His mother bought him a HP Pavilion laptop a couple of years ago. He
> spends much of his
> time in a reclusive condition ( improving now) and the laptop was his main
> link with the
> outside world, chiefly through facebook. That ought to have been somewhat
> OK, but he fell in
> with a bad crowd (that's normal for him :-( ).
> One of these characters infected his laptop with a trojan which had a
> backdoor, that enabled
> the malcontent to see everything that Chris did on his computer.
>
> This drove him just about nuts. He couldn't fix it. He was about to ditch
> the computer in the
> garbage, but somehow ( I forget how) he gave it to me instead, with his
> mother's blessing, as
> it could be useful as a travelling laptop if/when she and I travel to my
> son's wedding in Feb
> 2014.
>
> So he cleaned out most of his stuff and gave it to me.
> The first jinx wasn't too difficult to find on my own -
>
> Lucky Leap, which often comes attached to programs from Download.com This
> sends you
> to all kinds of advertisers etc.
> I found it when trolling through directories, as the silly name stood out
> like a sore thumb
>
> The next, and major, one was found by MS Security Essentials. Avast had
> simply failed to
> find it.
>
> It is part of the so-called "Brantall A" set, named in this instance "PC
> Performer 513765.exe"
> and with a link on the desktop "Continue PC Performer installation"
>
> All gone now and I am setting the machine up for his mother, and me when
> travelling -
> assuming this might happen. Her recovery from bronchial pneumonia is going
> to take some
> months, it seems.
>
> But, since MS, in their conditions, state that they have the right to
> troll through anywhere in
> my computer they like and send stuff back to MS, I'll give it a miss on my
> own machine.
>
> NSA revisited ...
>
> Brian Swale
>
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> http://www.avast.com
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