What does AntiVirusPro do?

A few months ago, I got a new (to me) computer. I was just messing around with it on the internet (without any antivirus program), and got hit. Suddenly, a little box popped up, telling me that Spyware was detected, and Windows would download the latest program to eliminate it, and another box would (continually) pop up saying that it was downloading AntiVirusPro2009. I hadn't heard of it before, but was suspicious of it, and stopped it and disconnected (on good old fashioned dial up). I then got BitDefender, which apparently got rid of it (I shortly thereafter ditched the BitDefender, which had several irritating glitches....not least of which was the fact that it slowed my computer to an excruciating crawl). I now have the trial version of NOD32 on two of my computers (getting rid of the even slower Norton on one computer), and it seems to run great. Fast and so far no problems. I just downloaded the full yearly version, but have yet to install it.

Anyway, my question: Just what does an infection like AntiVirusPro do (other than irritate the crap out of you)?

 

Most of the AntiVirus[whatever] variants were just generic malware that would install a fake scanner and attempt to direct you to a Russian website where you would pay them money for nothing. Some of them would do more nefarious things like install keyloggers or join your machine to a botnet, so watch for that.

 

Mainly spam the crap out of you and try to get you to buy the "full" version of the product.

If you want to make double sure you can download ESET SysInspector, create a log and send it so support("at")eset.com and ask them to confirm if you are clean. Put this threads URL in the subject.

 

Got the link to SysInspector?

 

This one of the bad ones stay away from them, at any cost.

Peace

 

Yeah, but is it possible to "stay away"? This one just hit me out of the blue. Wasn't downloading anything.

 

Keep up on the latest patches, run with a user account instead of an admin account for regular day to day stuff if you are on 2000/XP (or leave UAC enabled on Vista), make sure DEP is set to OptOut or AlwaysOn mode, run a good AV scanner.

Those first two are the most critical ones.