A customer gave his daughter an Acer Laptop for Christmas.  These come with an anti-virus pre-installed and he upgraded the subscription to one year.  After using the laptop for one day it became infected with a fake anti-virus trojan called Security Shield.  He phoned the anti-virus company and after a wait he got an incident number.  He phoned again (remember he had a years subscription for their product) and waited patiently until he could talk to someone who could help.  They tried a few things, gave him a new incident number, and then said they would have to charge for further technical support.  Surely as a paid up subscriber he should have got this support for free!  What is more he paid for a service that didn’t work as it failed to prevent the infection or remove it or even recognise it was there!  So how bad is that???  After removing the infection I will be advising him to try for his money back and a switch to the security system we recommend.  Otherwise I can see this scenario being repeated.

Another type of virus to watch out for is called ransom-ware and there is a particularly nasty one about which claims to be from the Metropolitan and Strathclyde police.  It locks the computer, says it has detected Illegal Activity, and if you don’t pay up you are in big trouble.  Further details can be found at http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2011/12/19/disorderly-conduct-localized-malware-impersonates-the-police.aspx

If you have a virus problem, or want advice on the best way to protect your home, business or portable devices then call Computer Troubleshooters – Medway.

We wish all our readers a Happy New Year !