AboutCarolyn Meinel Expertise I cover Windows, Unix, TCP/IP and Ethernet security questions. I do not cover Mac, Palm Pilot, or other networking issues.
Experience Books by Carolyn Meinel: wrote a chapter for The Hacking of America book (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567204600/happyhacker)
My article Code Red for the Web for Scientific American was reprinted in the book Best American Science Writing 2002 (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060936509/happyhacker). My book The Happy Hacker: A Guide to Mostly Harmless Hacking is now in 4th edition with a Japanese edition (see http://happyhacker.org/hhbook/).
Question First of all thank you for being available to share your expertise. I have McAfee full package installed, but recently I keep on getting "systems alert" popup warnings that my browser has been hijacked by a certain "trojan" spyware. The popup window keeps on disrupting my online activities/search. It just won't go away, suggesting that if I don't buy anti-spyware my computer will crash soon. Meanwhile, my McAfee system seems to indicate that things are okay. What should I do? If you agree I need to delete the popup window warning signs, how should I do it? Help.
Answer I'm assuming you have the complete McAfee Internet Security Suite, which includes antispyware. If you only have the McAfee antivirus program, then you need to upgrade to their Internet Security Suite to get antispyware protection.
If you already have their Internet Security Suite, then you have an unusual problem, a spyware infection that McAfee isn't able to delete. You were wise not to buy the antispyware advertised by that popup. This is a notorious crime scheme where your computer gets infected by software owned by the same company that asks you to buy their antispyware program. It certainly is a good idea to remove this infection because we don't know what else these criminals are doing to your computer. If you do online banking or use credit cards online, you might be safer if you alert them all to the possibility of identity theft. You can get complete instructions on how to protect yourself at http://www.antiphishing.org/
Here's the best way to solve your problem, assuming you already have McAfee Internet Security Suite. You can contact McAfee technical support, and these people probably should solve your problem as they know more about their software than anyone else. You can reach them at http://us.mcafee.com/root/support.asp
If for any reason McAfee technical support can't get their software to remove that spyware popup program, you can uninstall McAfee and replace it with the free trial version of the F-Secure security suite at https://store.f-secure.com/cgi-bin/dlreg/ml=EN?ID=FSISTB&desid=TRIAL
You must uninstall McAfee before installing F-Secure or else it and F-Secure will conflict and crash your computer.
If this solves your problem, you can either buy the F-Secure product or uninstall it and reinstall McAfee.
In the future you can avoid most forms of spyware by browsing with Firefox, free from mozilla.org, or Opera, free from Opera.com, instead of using Internet Explorer.
