Antivirus Sentry is a Threat to Your Computer

The title makes it obvious that Antivirus Sentry is not what it says it is. Antivirus Sentry is really a rogue antispyware program. The computer industry calls these programs “rogues” because they are fake. These programs are traps to separate you from your money and to take control of your computer in the process.

Some basic information about Antivirus Sentry in particular is that we have seen this program before. Antivirus Sentry is a clone of Vista Antivirus and MS Antivirus2008. These programs are part of the Innovagest 2000 family. Let me tell you a little about the Innovagest 2000 family. Innovagest 2000 is a company that creates and distributes nothing but rogue antispyware programs. That’s correct – a company dedicated to scamming you out of your money and using your computer for its own purposes.

Programs like Antivirus Sentry are spread through either the Vundo or Zlob Trojans. These Trojans get on your computer any number of ways. You could have gone to a porn site and a corrupt advertisement or video infected your computer. You could have gotten a corrupt or infected file while using a file sharing program. You could have opened a spam email and clicked on the file attached. Or the Trojan could have disguised itself as a video or ActiveX codec in an infected free download.

Once on your computer, the Vundo or Zlob Trojan will flood your computer with pop-ups telling you that your computer is infected or false security alerts telling you that your computer is under attack. Your web browser will be hijacked and you will be taken to antivirussentry.com. At the website a fake scan will run and then tell you that you are infected with a variety of malware.

At this point you are pressured to purchase the “full version” of Antivirus Sentry. The price will be $34.95, $49.95 or $119.95. If you give your credit card information you get nothing useful back. This is because Antivirus Sentry has already installed itself on your computer without your permission by this point. If you pay the money you will only get more malware, spyware and adware in exchange.

Antivirus Sentry is a resource hog. Your computer will slow down. The programming is shoddy and causes conflicts, which cause errors and freezes. This accelerates the wear and tear of your computer. If you look at your running processes you will see that Antivirus Sentry uses more of your CPU than your most demanding programs.

If you try to remove Antivirus Sentry through Add/Remove Programs you will find on system log in that Add/Remove Programs does not work. At system log on Antivirus Sentry will be running as if you never tried to uninstall it. Some people who are well versed in the registry will try to manually remove the infection. I do not suggest this route because removal can take hours and if you miss a single file Antivirus Sentry will reinstall itself. Not only that, but if you remove the wrong file you could cause Windows not to run.

What I suggest instead is for you to get a real, dependable antispyware program. There are many out there for $40 or less. Once you have an antispyware program on your computer, keep it updated and it can prevent any further infections by rogue antispyware or the Trojans that spread them.