Avast WEBforum
Other => Viruses and worms => Topic started by: sanctuaryforever on July 10, 2008, 09:14:38 PM
-
My brother installed a Instant messager called Sweet IM which I researched and found to be adware (at least people had said it is), Avast didnt detect it and I manually removed it but he had already deleted the installation file for it, I can post its website if that helps, does anyone have any background on it?
-
Hey, I dont Know if this helps at all but after googling it Ive came up with a few clean links
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/SweetIM.exe-14631.html
http://www.castlecops.com/s12680-SweetIM.html
Dont know if you have already seen these but I hope they help :)
-Justin
-
thanks for the links but with everyone on siteadvisor saying privacy concerns and the fact that it changes your home page and security settings without user knowledge makes me think this is more along the lines of spyware, anyone else heard this?
-
sounds along those lines to me more like a type of hijacker actually but its hard to say I keep getting mixed reactions to it when googling it between finjan and WOT
-
does anyone from Alwil team have any knowledge on this program and if it is malicious will you consider issuing a detection definition for it?
-
http://www.help2go.com/Tutorials/Running_Processes/SweetIM_:_What_is_it%3F.html
-
I have this program installed, and I personally enjoy it, all my friends have it too. My computer that has avast on it, however has issues. When I run a complete scan with avast, the message I get after the scan is completed under 'sweet im', is 'Unable To Scan'..then, on reboot, it deletes all sweet im files and the program itself. Why is that? Is there a way I can make avast not delete this program upon reboot? I happen to LIKE this program, and have no problems with my laptop that is running Kaspersky with it. Any ideas?
-
Firstly avast doesn't delete autonomously either on boot or otherwise, it alerts to infection and you the user choose the action to be taken. I presume avast isn't alerting on this program (or you would have mentioned it) ?
Files that can't be scanned are just that, not an indication they are suspicious/infected, just unable to be scanned.
However, you can make selections on what to do with these files after the scan, you should take no action at all, close the window. So did you select an action ?
Many programs (usually security based ones) password protect their files for legitimate reasons such as AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy, there are others (and avast doesn't know the password or have any way of using it even if it did know it).
When you run scans with the above programs and you delete harmful entries that they detect, a copy is kept (in quarantine/restore/backup) in case you need to reverse what you did. These are usually password protected, you should do some housekeeping and delete old backup/recovery/quarantine entries (older than two weeks or so), this will reduce the numbers of files that can't be scanned.
By examining 1) the reason given by avast! for not being able to scan the files, 2) the location of the files, you can get an idea of what program they relate to. You may need to expand the column headings to see all the text. If you can give some examples of those file names, the locations and reason given why it can't be scanned might help us further ?