Just a reminder, check your bookmarks.

[Sbob]

Earlier tonight, I was goofing around and pulled up my (Win10) Start menu. I found an old bookmark from one of my Wings Of Power installs with a link to their (really old) forums and figured, "What the heck, I wonder if it still works?". Well, no and yeah.

The link re-directed to some spam site in India that started bombarding my "notifications" that my McAffee antivirus software had been hacked and to "just click here" to fix it. I don't run McAffee, I HATE McAffee, and it isn't installed on my stuff.

So, it took about an hour to clean up this "hacking attempt" (I did a quick re-install of CCleaner free version and purged all of the cookies in Chrome and ran a quick clean-up) and get everything running again. I'm sure the hack site in India screwed with the old WoP URL and added some "special benefits".

In other words, if you have old payware installed in your older Flight Sims its probably a good idea to delete those old links.
Its not like you'll be downloading patches and updates for that 10+ year old payware and old/abandoned gaming sites seem to be prone to this kind of mischief.

 

[wolfebee89]

CCleaner alone, may not suffice. Consider downloading the now discontinued JRT tool by Malwarebytes from the likes of Majorgeeks; AdwCleaner, also by Malwarebytes is alternatively, can also be recommended (https://www.malwarebytes.com/junkwareremovaltool), but may not be all that effective to get rid of all the buggers, compared to the older JRT. As a cautionary note, in case of using either, if using FSDreamteam software, the esellerate.dll(s) are removed, so make a backup copy of those files to an external flash drive (and disconnect the flash drive) before running the said cleaners, and after the cleaning run, put the backed-up files back in the pertinent folder, and do so before running MSFS. Best to run the JRT tool as an admin. Moreover, it creates a log text file on the desktop at the end of the run, indicating all files it has deleted (there is no quarantine in the cleaning routine, thus the caution) and further, the JRT tool does create and validate a system restore point before the cleaning run.

Also why not try installing the freeware version of Malwarebytes and while no real-time protection is offered in the free version, system scans with free definition updates at regular intervals can prove beneficial, and is also not a system resource hog. I can also recommend free Malwarebytes browser guard for your browser (available @ Chrome webstore, Mozilla Addons/Extensions) to block webpages before they are able to install any sort of adware, PUPs, spyware, etc. on your system; and you can customize/detail the exceptions as necessary, i.e. in the event of false-flags/positives.

Cheers!

 

[Sbob]

Now-a-days I rarely run CCleaner.
If I have to run it, I'll delete the install after I clean up the trouble and do a re-install if its needed.

For the most part, I keep Defender running and try to avoid the troublesome web site URL's.
Defender seems to be the most up-to-date and thorough A/V program and I caught my old A/V software running Defender in the background to do all of of the "heavy lifting".
I'm also not in hurry to move my pers data and files out to the cloud.

Your mileage may vary, if running MWB makes you feel secure then stick with it.

My main point is to avoid those old FS URL's that have gone dormant.