Remove Antivirus 2008

All of a sudden I am getting an automatic launching of Symantic's Antivirus 2008, which I never bought or downloaded. I have been getting scarry info on this program and don't want it to affect my FCP files. Is there a way to get rid of this on os x 10.4.11?

Did you do a spotlight search for Symantic or Norton? Do it. If nothing exists on your computer it is probably one of those web pages that pop up occasionally that force you to force quit your browser to avoid downloading the virus program.

Michael Horton
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I removed a Norton folder last night (only thing labeled Norton or Symantic) and this morning I am now getting Antivirus 2009 instead of 2008. It only happens on a few websites and a few files on those sites, but it is annoying and I really need to trash it. I have done Google searches for removing this on OS X but none of the sites was helpful; they always refer to things in the PC domain. Any ideas how to get rid of this?

Happening on the web doesn't mean you have sick files on your computer. Not saying you dont have a trojan but its unlikely. Try same pages using another browser. Or trash cookies and clear cache.

Michael Horton
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I found this by Googling Antivirus 2008. Norton has a product with this name, but it's also the name of known spyware. All these instructions pertain to PCs, of course, not Macs, but the dire warnings are probably just web based. I doubt that is has "infected" you at all, but it can be damn annoying.

Scott

I've gotten it on a few sites myself. Its not on your Mac but is as Scott siad, web based. Just dont download that exe file it wants you too. You need to force quit your browser to get out of it. Usually wait a day or so to go back to the page and its gone.

Michael Horton
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I do a lot of surfing with pop-up windows blocked and JavaScript turned off. I miss the occasional reference to a YouTube video and for that, I turn JavaScript back on. Sometimes, I don't need to, the video will play without it.

Occasionally, I'll turn it back on to see what I've been missing. Usually pages of flashing commercials and sound tracks trying to sell me something and pushing the stuff I wanted down to a little corner of the page.

I'm typing this with no JavaScript and later I'll be reading the New York Times and XKCD among a lot of other things. I'll probably need to change that as more and more people do everything with video, but for now. it works just fine.

Yahoo Mail used to work full frame and no commercials at all without JavaScript running. When was the last time your free email program covered your whole screen? Then they caught on and offer non-JavaScript commercials now.

I don't get rogue floating windows, either. All compliments of "take over your computer for you" JavaScript.

Koz

The Antivirus 2009 (switched over from 2008 two days ago automatically) appears on all browsers (Safari, Camino, Opera, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox), but only on video programs on one particular site. Hard closing all the browsers does not make any sense in getting rid of it. Would I have to open each one, hard close it, them wait a couple of days? It seems I would have to trash a program or a file or something. Any other ideas?

What we are all trying to say is that we think there's nothing there to trash. Anyone who goes to those sites will be told the exact same rubbish. Think of it as really aggressive advertising.

Unless you have downloaded something and installed it, in which case you would have got an alert from your Mac saying something like 'You are about to install an application, is this really what you want to do?' and then you clicked 'yes' to install it. Did you? If not, it's 99% likely that this is just scary advertising.

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Any other ideas?

Just don't go to those sites for a couple days.

Michael Horton
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