Online Advertising

WinFixer

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, by MultiMedia

Back | Home | Up | Next

---

The screenshot of www.winfixer.com

WinFixer is a computer program that claims to have the ability to repair any computer system problem. However, due to its regular displaying of popup notifications, dubious installation (installing itself without the user's permission), and advertisements of other products, WinFixer is generally regarded as a bogus adware program. The popup ads display insistent notifications to convince the user that something may be amiss with the computer, and WinFixer will be able to fix it, for a price.

Due to these problems, WinFixer could possibly be spyware or malware; no authoritative determination has yet been made. However, its misleading popups and forced downloads mirror the "marketing" strategies of many spyware programs. Some computers infected with this program do exhibit sluggish performance.

WinFixer's claim:

WinFixer 2005 is useful utility to scan and fix any system, registry and hard drive errors. It ensures system stability and performance, frees wasted hard drive space and recovers damaged Word, Excel, music and video files.

In reality, WinFixer doesn't do any of these things.

How it Infects

There are several ways in which WinFixer can infect a computer. Users using Internet Explorer are most susceptible, although users of other browsers, such as Firefox and Opera can also be infected, but are more resistant to the program.

Typical Infection

The infection usually occurs during a visit to a distributing web site (not necessarily winfixer.com) using Internet Explorer. A message appears in a Dialog Box, asking the user if they want to install WinFixer.

Initial message prior to infection - Disconnect from the internet before closing this!

However, when the user chooses any of the options or tries to close this dialog (by clicking 'Ok' or 'Cancel' or by clicking the corner 'X'), it will trigger a pop-up window and WinFixer will download and install itself, despite the user