RogueRemover and a Short History of Rogues

RogueRemover has been around for awhile, but I like to be thorough and wait till I know a program is good. There's lots of talk here and around the Net about rogue antispyware programs, but what are they?

In short, it is a program that is supposed to be helpful but really is useless or even has been put on your computer to try to sell itself. The most famous of these are the ones from the Smitfraud group from the Russian mob scam artists. Names like SpyAxe, SpyFalcon and WinAntivirus are just a few of them. Back in 2005, the first one, SpyAxe, hit the Internet and ticked off alot of people. I posted removal instructions on my old blog on how to remove it. Most of the 200,000+ page views for that one post came in the first 3 months. By then, SpyAxe was out and a new rogue SpywareStrike was screwing up people's computers. Many people found out it was easier to use trojans to infect people's computers and then offer a solution. Now there are many of these rogue programs.

SmitFraudFix targets the actual trojan, usual called zlob, to rid your computer of these pests. RougeRemover targets the fake programs that get installed. So here i'll start giving updates for RougeRemover, since it is a good tool to remove the fake antispyware programs we call rogue programs.

RogueRemover is a utility that can remove various rogue antispyware, antivirus and hard drive cleaning utilities. Rogue applications are applications that rather than remove spyware, provide false positives, distribute malware or spyware, advertise, or provide useless uninstallers.

You can download RogueRemove from Malwarebytes.org and a few other sites like MajorGeeks. You can read more about it at Malwarebytes.

Here are the recent programs it removes, plus selected older rogues.

Current Version is 151

Added: AntiVirGear, CryptDrive, OSBodyGuard, PCSleep Error Cleaner, SafeStrip, SpywareLocker, SystemDefender

Updated: Rogue.Infector

Previous additions: virusProtectPro, VideoAccessCodec, Spyware-Sweeper, SpyHeal, VirusHeal, BPS Spyware Remover, SpyLocked, Ultimate Cleaner, MalwareWiped, SpyCrush, SpyDawn, VirusRescue and oldies like SpyAxe and SpyFalcon