Suspicious AntiVirus Alert Popped Up on Web Page

Anonymous
2013-05-11T03:08:31+00:00

I am suspicious about messages that popped up when I went to a web page I'd never been to before. First a message popped up stating "Microsoft Antivirus has found critical process activity on your PC. You need to clean your computer to prevent system breakage."  And then right afterwards another message appeared -- I might have pressed okay --  in a rectangular box with a thick red stripe across the top that read "Potential Threat Details," and then below "Microsoft Security Essentials detected potential threats that might compromise your privacy or damage your computer. You need to clean your computer immediately to prevent the system crash."  But I noticed that "might" was spelled "mihgt." Then below that it listed the threats as:

Trojan PSW.Win32Launch

HackTool:Win32/Welevate.A

Adward.Win32Fraud

It said each of the three was "critical" and "active" and recommended I "remove" them.

Then below all this was a box I could check that said "clean computer."

Now aside from the misspelling of "might," I do not have Microsoft Security Essentials; I have Windows Defender, so I'm pretty sure this is a fake alert.

And I didn't press "clean computer." But I'm wondering what would have happened if I had; would I have gotten a virus, or a sales pitch to buy more antivirus software? But mostly I want to know what really will happen when my antivirus program -- which, again, is Windows Defender for Windows 8 -- does detect a real virus. It hasn't happened yet so I don't know, and I also would like to be able to distinguish the real alerts from the fake ones, especially if the fake ones do not have misspelled words as a telling sign.

Thanks

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Security and privacy

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Anonymous
2013-05-11T09:37:27+00:00

It is a fake alert and creater of that alert can enter as many virus names as he/she can, don't worry about that alert. Just practice safe browsing, do not click on Ads (specially of unknown source), always use original software and download them from their genuine sites only. Run scans from the tools you downloaded, and use free version only (neither Pro nor Trial).

About Trojan in quarantine-

Items in quarantine are neutral and cannot harm your PC, just like criminals in jail. There is no need to delete items in quarantine. You can also run a full scan of your PC to ensure no virus is lurking in your PC.

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Anonymous
2013-05-13T15:28:33+00:00

As per your description above, except for the part... "it said it couldn't do much with that"... (Don't know what you mean by this?)

When someone tries to close AdwCleaner after clicking on 'Search' button then AdwCleaner alerts that it has only scanned for Adwares, not removed them and asks to click on 'Delete' button to complete removal. This is what he is trying to say.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-02-08T15:19:16+00:00

    Are you sure the you have been taken to after clicking on that popup is of AVG? I think its fake one. Since Malwarebytes, Safety Scanner and AVG gave clean results I can say your PC do not have any virus or trojan but it may have adware which is the main cause of these kind of popups (antivirus scanners don't remove adwares as they are not threats, just junk programs). To get rid of adwares run AdwCleaner and Junkware Removal Tool.

    @CL1977: You also please run scan with AdwCleaner and Junkware Removal Tool.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-02-08T14:08:14+00:00

    This happened to me as well. I didn't click anything. I just shut my computer down. But now my computer is running really slow. When I went to Hulu to watch my episodes it said that I changed my settings and ads couldn't play. The videos buffer every 5 minutes, even on NBA.com. Video will not stream the way it use to before I got that strange alert.  I didn't change anything. I ran a scan with my Security Essentials but it's not detecting any threats? But my computer hasn't been performing the same since. Not sure what's going on?

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-02-08T01:20:12+00:00

    Hello,

    I got an M Alert with the tab heading of 'Microsoft Security Essentials Alert.  It also listed the following threats that required me to clean my computer:

    Trojan PSW.Win32Launch

    HackTool:Win32/Welevate.A

    Adward.Win32Fraud

    Unfortunately I clicked to remove the threats, this took me to an AVG page which said that the threats had been removed.

    Since then I have ran the following programs:

     - Malware Bytes

     - Microsoft Safety Scanner

     - Windows Defender

     - AVG Full Scan

    All of these came back with no threats found. 

    It is possible that this was a legit alert from AVG or would this have done some damage to my computer?

    I am not sure what else I could do to remedy this situation but I am now worried that my computer has a virus or trojan.  Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks!

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