Jane_Doe - 7:08 pm on Aug 30, 2007 (gmt 0)

I'd be interested to know the names of the malware, and the name of the program that successfully removed it (no links, please).

The names of the stuff popping up on their computer were softwarereferral.com, safewebnavigate, confidentsurf, SecurePC Cleaner, Spy-shredder among others. At least I think these were the fake ones. They had some security software programs I wasn't familiar with also running so it took me a bit to try to figure out which messages were real and which were fake.

The fix was running a program called smitfraudfix.

While I'm glad to help out my neighbor, it just seems to me that people with just basic computer knowledge should be able to go to a corporate site like Microsoft or Norton for help with these kinds of problems and not have to root through tech forums for fixes written by individual white hat hacker types. If the fixes are not on major corporate sites, then it is difficult, if not impossible, for the average person to even know which fixes are real and which are scams. The whole process itself seems severely dysfunctional and in need of repair.

[edited by: Jane_Doe at 7:11 pm (utc) on Aug. 30, 2007]