Fake AdwCleaner: with removal instructions

Lowell Heddings said:

The latest trend in the awful Windows ecosystem is pretty ridiculous — scammers have a fake version of the reputable AdwCleaner tool, which is a real tool for Windows experts. And this one pretends your computer is infected and tries to make you pay them to remove it.

AdwCleaner is indeed a real freeware tool, with a good reputation for removing spyware and adware. It’s not as well known as MalwareBytes because it’s not all that user friendly, since it is meant for Windows experts rather than regular users. And the scammers have tried to mimic the interface, stealing the logo, and even ripping out the icon (badly) for their fake version.

image: How-to-Geek​

The ironic thing is that this is getting on people’s PCs that are already infected with adware or spyware of some type, which then keep popping up windows to a page that looks like this one… which tells you that adware is detected. Which is surprisingly accurate, although the fake app isn’t going to remove that adware.

Once you click through that dialog, it’ll give you a scary message like this, telling you to download AdwCleaner. Since you’ve probably heard your geeky friends talking about AdwCleaner, a normal user might be tempted to download it.

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RolandJS said:

Google's blocking most if not all of Filehippo downloads. At least, that was the case in the very recent past.

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