I was happily browsing away on my computer last week when the totalantispyware pop ups started. I knew that getting pop ups meant that I had been infected with spyware, but I figured it was no big deal and didn’t bother to do anything about it. After all, I’m not stupid enough to believe that the “full version” of totalantispyware is going to do me any good, and I’m certainly not going to believe any so-called error reports that this uninvited bug kept trying to shove in my face. So, my logic of “let it be” seemed like an appropriate choice at the time.
Until the pop ups started happening so frequently that it felt like I was spending all of my time closing windows that is. When my browser started to magically redirect itself my concern grew, but it wasn’t until my computer started to freeze up and run so slowly that I couldn’t get anything done that I got annoyed enough to spring into action. I had one of those free antispyware scanners on my computer, which I decided to run as a first line of defense. I know, I know, I should have done that to begin with, but as it turns out my lack of attention didn’t matter. I ran the scanner and it came up showing that there was nothing wrong with my machine!
Now I was starting to get irritated. There certainly was something wrong, and it needed to be fixed now! So I went over to a friend’s house to use her spyware-free machine and see what I could dig up on this little bugger.
It turns out that I most likely got infected with totalantispyware when I was trying to download some video codec that I needed and had unknowingly downloaded spyware instead. Still unwilling to pay for anything, I found some manual removal instructions online and followed the removal protocol. It worked wonderfully and I enjoyed a full afternoon of pop up free surfing. Much to my dismay however, totalantispyware was back in full force when I rebooted my machine the next morning!
This was getting to be too much. I resisted the urge to throw my computer out the window and relieve some tension by smashing it to bits and instead called my geeky, gaming brother in South Dakota to ask him if he had any bright ideas.
As luck would have it, he did. He knew right off the bat that I’d been infected with rogue antispyware and told me that the reason it had returned after my painstaking search and destroy was that I had missed one of its hidden files. Turns out the sneaky little buggers are much like ivy – they can regenerate themselves so long as any piece of them is left on the machine. He also told me my free antispyware scanner had missed it because it probably wasn’t strong enough. Little did I know that most of those freebies only catch about 75% of any given spyware on a machine.
He then recommended that I save myself the headache of trying again and just buck up and invest in some quality antispyware so that I wouldn’t have to deal with this problem again. He told me that something called SpyZooka was the only product that guaranteed 100% removal and that he’d appreciate it if I’d download it and stop bugging him.
Well, I did and I couldn’t be happier. SpyZooka found totalantispyware and removed it right off the bat. Even better, I haven’t had problems since. If you too would like to save yourself the trouble, you can get started with a free scan here: http://www.spyzooka.com.
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