I have a piece of software on my system.
I didn’t install it, but it runs every time I start my computer. It sits in the system tray with a little icon, and sends me a pop-up ad every four hours.
There is no setting to disable this popup, and it shows up like clockwork whether or not I tell this software to exit.
The files for this software are hidden somewhere in the maze of folders on my computer, and are not labeled well or easy to find. Many of them are probably very hard to identify for what they are.
The uninstall utility for this software doesn’t work. It brings up a blank window that does nothing. I want it off my computer, but I don’t know how to get rid of it.
Does that sound like malware to you?
The sofware is McAffee VirusScan, and the popup ad asks me ever four hours if I’d like to spend $59 to shut it up for one year, despite the fact that I already have working anti-virus software on my computer that I installed myself.
It is stupid that McAffee is trying to sell their product using the same strategy as the people they claim to protect you against: annoying, in-your-face, unremovable crap. I’m not going to buy anything from them (I’d say again, but I never have in the first place!).