Some of the “best posts” are ones that bash “Rogue” bloggers and sites with poor WOT reputation. I am on the bad side of this argument, as my rogue removal site 2-viruses.com has not too good reputation. This is how they attracted my attention in the first place.

However, the last post kind of crossed the line : Auto Blogs are Unethical and Downright Wrong . Here Frank claims that auto blogs are unethical, as they do not attribute the owner. And I completely agree that this is unethical, though simplifying everything to direct money gain is a bit too easy.

However, the problem with this statement is that he is not attributing the ownership himself. And that is easily proven by checking some things in the last removal descriptions provided on techjaws.com for Antivirus IS. Here a screenshot:

An interesting part on this screenshot is the way infected files are used. There are 2 lines referencing XP file locations, and one line referencing Windows 7 file locations in completely different format. Note, that there is an user User referenced, and the way random file names are used.

When I asked Frank on comments on the autoblog topic, I got this response, that he tested it on Virtual Machine. Well, that is possible, if he has VMs running 2 different operating systems AND uses inconsistent file naming out of hurry.

However, a simple google search clears all the doubts:

Note, in which company techjaws site is : All other sites are rated RED. At least one of them is referenced in other posts bashing sites with RED WOT rating. And all of other sites posted removal instructions for Antivirus IS couple days earlier than TechJAWs. are they mind readers?

To clear last doubts, here is screenshot from spywarevoid (I am not affiliated with that site, though I know people that work there and  that it does not belong to Frank).

Can it be that 4 different sites test Rogue on 2 machines in exactly same configuration and have same inconsistency displaying results, even if the sites are not owned by the same people?

Now I would not bash anyone for copying part of other people work. Even the attribution can be hard due to fact that you might miss the original poster, and do not want to credit someone that is clearly a rogue blogger. I am guilty of similar things in the past, though I am trying to do it better now. But I will never bash other people. And I will always attribute original author if reminded.

What I do not like is hypocrisy: bashing others and doing same thing. It is especially bad, as TechJaws displays advertisements (google ads and others), thus it tries to gain some money out of blogging.

If you want removal instructions for this crap, we recomend 2-viruses.com guide how to remove Spyware Guard 2008.

I suggest using legitimate spyware removers, e.g. Spyware Doctor, MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware or some others, for removing this and and other parasites.

Manual instructions can be found at 2-viruses.com page on WinAntivirus2008.

Spyware sweeper is a legitimate spyware remover and quite good one too. This was not unnoticed by scammers and they released a rogue skinned similarly to spyware sweeper – SpywareSweeperPro. It was released in the hopes that the users would believe that SpywareSweeperPro is an advanced version of legitimate remover. Of couse, nothing is advanced about it – it’s a scam like many others. It looks like it is more than popular to tarnish the name of real software, as just recently we got a similar parasite that targeted oldie SpyBot search & destroy.

The SpywareSweeperPro infection path is similar to other parasites – exploits and downloads from dubious content websites, hoping to hit users that do not have time to read software reviews and learn what is good for PC and what is not. Also, they might hit people who won’t notice that SpywareSweeperPro is marketed by different company than the real SpywareSweeper.

I would suggest never downloading applications like SpywareSweeperPro without google’ing about it in the web – you will soon notice that it is a fake. Remove Spyware spywareSweeperPro and stick to legitimate removers like Spyware Doctor, SuperAntiSpyware, Spyware Sweeper and some other tools.

SpywareSweeperPro information at symantec.