XPAntivirus or how to pretend being legitimate

Internet users are becoming slightly more careful. Slightly, as they do not believe each ad they see on website. We have seen MalwareThis and MalwareThat, VirusThis and VirusThat and so on, most of the users already know where the risk is with such products. They do not download such products from clone websites, and if they get infected other ways, they look for help. Only some people fall for such easy scams.

Some of the scams become better and cover their tracks using legal internet merchant solutions or have legal sounding name and “company”. Of couse, the company is either short-lived, or it never existed in first place. One noticeable example is Pandora Software (authors of WinIFixer, InfeStop,  SpyMaxx, etc), which bakes as many “removers” that their business starts looking unrealistic.

The bigger risk is products that try to mimic products with good name or at least company name. Such examples are The SpyBot, SpySweeperPro, and XPAntivirus (Mimicking XP brand). These parasites try to use both good reviews of legitimate programs or brands together with illeagal distribution or excessive advertisments. In fact it is quite weird that XPAntivirus survived for so long – its not a new software. It looks like people have hard time to distinguish between slight variations in the name.

How to protect from these scams? I think there is only one solution : do not believe and double-check. Google the full names of removers. Check  its reviews, and not in the review sites where they give you only one pick! (Yeah, there are some). Each 5 minutes spent researching the software like XPAntivirus might save you from purchasing that crap.