Savernet adware - As nasty as they come.

February 18, 2015

Today I was looking for an OCR program since I needed to do some OCR. I hardly download anything but this one is just one of those things. I usually try different programs so that I can suggest and add them to my list of usable programs.  In short one that I tried came with this nasty advertisement crapware. I usually take as many precautions about these things, but I also like to see how these things work so that I can fix them later. These are the screens that keep popping up when I tried to use explorer. That is not my default browser by the way so I'm using my other browser to go on the internet. There are many browsers out there so always keep something other than just internet explorer on your computer as IE can't be uninstalled like any regular program. The OCR in the links I have is not this one so don't worry about that. I won't put anything that I find to have any sort of added programs or ads. This is why I also don't use any app on the phone that includes ads. It's a sure way to get stuff you don't want. In short, this won't get cleaned up as easily as you think. I have been meaning to clean up my computer anyway so it may be sooner than later.

 This is the window you get after that is installed on the computer.

 Try to close the window and here's the next pop up you get.

 Close the above and this is what you get. Unfortunately the Microsoft security essentials is pretty useless at detecting this sort of thing. This is just an ad program so it's not a virus, but a very annoying one at that since you can't use the browser.

 I installed the malwareytes and that seems to have tone it down. It's still messing up the browser so I'm still looking into it.

 Here's the file name which is not even close to what I started looking at.

 After the so called clean up, I'm still getting the problem, but with a different program suggestion. I know I don't need that because that's what it was named under the control panel too.

Here's more information on what I found under the add-ons in explorer. The options are grayed out there so I can't do much there either.  I'll do a few more things, but as you can see, these add-ons and crapware is getting pretty ugly each time.

If you see Spyhunter adverstised as being a good removal tool for this, forget about it. It's another crapware software that wants you to buy something. Not to mention un-installing it can be a pain too. It's been a while since I tried some of these so I thought I try a few now to see what else is new on this end. But yeah, don't bother with this junk.

 When you try to get out, you get this other pop up.

And it wants to force a reboot. I will reboot when I'm ready. So before rebooting I installed a few other programs.

 In short, a good antivirus works just fine. So make sure that you are running a well known antivirus for this sort of thing and don't fall for weird random programs that tell you they will clean these out for you.

Keep in mind that not everything can be cleaned and sometimes you have to go a very different route.

As it turned out, this adware was nastier than I thought. Even after getting a hold on this the computer was still acting up so back up your stuff and start over. Oh yeah, windows will refuse to install again, well it did for me anyway.