I have been attempting to install Ad-Aware Free on my Windows XP computer. When I visit the Ad-Aware website (www.lavasoft.com) to download the product I follow through the prompts, but at the end when I am about to commence downloading the product a message appears saying “This website has been reported as unsafe. We recommend that you do not continue to this website”. Why is Internet Explorer reporting that the Ad-Aware download is unsafe, and how can I download this product?

The warning screen that is appearing in Internet Explorer is part of the new features in Internet Explorer 8 called SmartScreen Filter which is designed to warn the user when they may be visiting a potentially malicious website. Since you seem to be certain that you are downloading Ad-Aware Personal from the proper source (i.e. www.lavasoft.com which is the website for the developer of the software) it is likely that your computer is currently infected with some kind of malware which is detecting that you wish to download an anti-malware utility and preventing this download, instead directing you to a different website (perhaps to fool you into downloading some other kind of malicious fake “anti-malware” utility, which will actually make things a whole lot worse on your computer). Therefore, we need to do something to remove this malware from your computer.

However, we may have a chicken-and-egg situation, where we need to download Ad-Aware Free to remove the malware, but we need to remove the malware to download Ad-Aware Free! Before getting too caught-up in circular logic, try downloading two other anti-malware utilities: Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org) and Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com/downloads). Just be extra vigilant that you are downloading these programs from the correct authentic source and are not being redirected to a dodgy website (like is happening for Ad-Aware). Whilst the SmartScreen Filter is blocking the malicious Ad-Aware website, this is only because that malicious website has been listed as malicious in the SmartScreen Filter database. If you are redirected to a malicious website when downloading Spybot Search & Destroy or Windows Defender, and that malicious website is not listed in SmartScreen filter, then you will not be blocked. So it pays to stay alert.

If you can successfully download these utilities then install these on your computer and complete a scan of the machine to remove any detected malware. Once these scans have completed and any detected threats have been removed, restart the computer and check whether you are now able to download Ad-Aware Free. If so, I suggest that you download the product and then also complete a scan with Ad-Aware Free, just in case Ad-Aware Free can detect other malware which the other two utilities did not detect.

However, if you find that you cannot download the other anti-malware utilities, but encounter the same problem, or these utilities do not remove the specific threat preventing the download of Ad-Aware Free, then I would suggest that you download Ad-Aware Free on another computer and then copy the program onto a USB drive so that it can be transferred and installed on your computer.