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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