I recently purchased a program called ErrorSmart and installed this along with Spybot Search & Destroy and NoAdware on my computer. When I ran a scan with Spybot it detected both ErrorSmart and NoAdware as malware – both are products which I purchased! I checked on Google and some sites recommend this software and others warn that it contains malware. Can you advise me about whether I have been scammed?

You have touched on a very good point. Often when searching Google to research questions I find that various products are advertised which claim to clean all errors from your computer and make it run smoothly. I give such utilities and claims little credence. In most cases these are utilities which simply scan through your computer and provide a nice technical-looking interface no different to what many other utilities can do. Additionally, I have found that most of these utilities are quite ineffective and are just a way for some people to make money. At their worst, the software may corrupt various files and folders on your computer, and potentially the Windows Registry (in the case of registry cleaners) which I have seen occur on multiple occasions. Most of the time this is not intentional, but the result of the utility attempting to “clean-up” and remove “unneeded” entries from the registry. There are some utilities which are intentionally malicious and install adware, spyware, and/or other malware on your computer. To make things more difficult, often there may be a legitimate version of a utility but then some unscrupulous people (unaffiliated with the original author) make a malicious version of the software and try to pass it off to unsuspecting users as the real deal.

In any case, let’s take a closer look at the applications which have installed themselves on your computer. The first program is ErrorSmart. When I attempted to visit www.errorsmart.com I received an alert from my antivirus scanner (ESET NOD32) which said “Access Denied - Access to the web page was blocked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. The web page is on the list of websites with potentially dangerous content”. This is not a good sign, and it is also not a good sign that I have never encountered this message from my antivirus scanner before (indicating that this is a serious threat). To check what all the commotion was about I bypassed the alert and visited the website. Interestingly enough, it says that ErrorSmart is a free download. I am unsure whether this was a recent change (or it is a piece of software which you can download and scan for free but need to purchase to fix the errors) but if you did download and purchase ErrorSmart from www.errorsmart.com then it seems you may have been scammed into purchasing a non-legitimate product. I would recommend uninstalling this from your computer.

Regarding the NoAdware program, this is also a rather controversial piece of software. Many users report that NoAdware is not a particularly good piece of malware removal software, as it scans the computer but then requires you to pay to remove the threats. Additionally, users have reported that it “beefs-up” the scan report to make it seem like your system is more infected than may actually be the case, so providing further motivation for purchasing the product. Questionable marketing aside, I would not trust this piece of software purely based upon the reports which I have read on this software and also the tactics which are used to make you purchase the software. In any case, from the reviews which I have read it seems that NoAdware is fairly ineffective against most malware and adware threats so it probably does not offer the best protection. I would also uninstall this software.

At this point the only concern which I have is that because the ErrorSmart and NoAdware utilities were previously installed they may not have been completely uninstalled. Given the questionable marketing tactics used to make you purchase this software, I would not be surprised if something was left behind which attempts to make you reinstall the software. Common examples are messages appearing on screen informing you that your computer may be infected with spyware or adware and you should download and install one of the aforementioned software packages to clean your system. Alternatively, you may also find that your computer exhibits strange behaviour such as blocking access to certain websites because they are claimed to be “unsafe” (but you know they are perfectly safe as you have visited the sites before). I suggest that once you have uninstalled these packages you download and install Ad-Aware SE Free (www.lavasoft.de) and Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com/downloads), together with updating Spybot to the latest definitions. These three utilities are my recommendations for best protection against spyware, adware and other malware infections on the computer. If you use these utilities in conjunction with an antivirus scanner, that should provide excellent protection. Additionally, this should hopefully remove any remnants of the ErrorSmart and NoAdware utilities.

If you find that components of the ErrorSmart and NoAdware utilities remain after uninstalling the programs and running the three antispyware utilities, then you may need to consider a clean reinstallation of Windows to guarantee that these are removed for good. This decision should not be taken lightly, as it is a fairly involved process to backup all the data on your computer that you wish to keep and complete a reinstallation of Windows from scratch.