eXPress Antivirus 2009
When I got infected by eXPress Antivirus, I almost had to laugh. I wasn’t fooled for a second. I think it may be because they didn’t try hard enough to make me think it was an actual Windows product. The downside to this story is that even though I didn’t buy it, I still had an infection to deal with.
First of all, I wasn’t in the market for a new antivirus to begin with. I had a good one. I was trying to watch a video when eXPress Antivirus hit. I came to find out later that this is usually how these things get you.
Basically, I missed one of my favorite shows on TV, and thought I’d catch it on the Internet. Of course, I didn’t want to pay for a membership to a normal TV website. I found a free one that had my episode. I clicked on the video player icon and waited for the video codec to download. Soon after, eXPress Antivirus popped up instead of my show.
I heard about rogue security tools before, and this is just how eXPress Antivirus struck me. Some of the imagery on the scanning screen seemed to imply a connection to Windows. I noticed, though, that the shield was brown and black. I also took note that none of the fonts or colors really seemed to match a Windows theme.
I tried to shut down eXPress Antivirus, but it kept popping back up with this unwanted scan. Every time I reopened my browser, there it was. I had also been taken to www.expressantivirus2009.com along the way. I was getting kind of irritated.
Eventually, I just shut off my computer, hoping that would prevent me from actually getting infected with eXPress Antivirus. I turned it back on, pretty smug that I had gotten rid of it. Nope—apparently it starts again when you reboot.
Okay, so I was officially infected with eXPress Antivirus. Like I said, I was pretty sure that it was a rogue security tool, so I ran my antispyware program. It didn’t find anything, so I felt kind of let down. I knew that I had a bug on my computer, whatever my antispyware said. I tried updating it and running it again. It still didn’t find eXPress Antivirus.
Okay, so I had to get a new and improved antispyware program to get rid of eXPress Antivirus. I shopped around for a little bit, but got even more frustrated. I mean, how do you choose among several programs that claim to be the best?
I wanted the best program available. After all, if eXPress Antivirus was a 2009 model, then it might be too new for some programs, right? I tried all the free programs, and they were just junk. They couldn’t find it.
I decided to look into guarantees. Along the way, I came across a program with a 100% spyware removal guarantee called SpyZooka. I tested the trial version, and it found it within five minutes. Happily, I bought the program and haven’t had a problem since.
