Computer help - Awareness Technologies Webwatcher Software

wayne3burk

Hey -- I hate to even post this on here..... but, my daughter is separated from her husband of 2 yrs. She moved out about a month ago, and last week he gave her the laptop computer to use (she has an iMac at their townhouse, the laptop is his).

She checked their joint checking / credit card account today and saw that he made a charge for something from awareness technologies - the makers of webwatcher software. He made the charge before he gave her the laptop.

Does anyone here know how to remove an invisible - keylogging - spying from anywhere software.

I'm thinking I'll have to contact Dell support and get a copy of windows 7 and reformat the hard drive.

Thanks in advance,

wayne

Sherardp

keyloggers are fun but it could be well hidden in any directory. I would run Malwarebytes which should catch it. If nothing comes up then yes the best way to rid of it is to format. You could also run CCleaner and rid of the installation that way, CCleaner would also remove registry entries installed the by the exe.

On3s&Z3r0s

A quick google turned up this: http://www.wikihow.com/Detect-and-Remove-Webwatcher

You could try those instructions... you're right that the only way to be sure it's gone is to reformat the HD and reinstall the OS. Most Dell's come with a CD that allows you to reinstall a clean image of the OS they came with and all the drivers. If it's the husband's laptop, she should give it back to him and get her own. I believe what the husband did is illegal, and she might want to give the laptop to her divorce attorney before you mess with it further.

greg2350

combofix http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/anti-virus/combofix

or if your a experienced user you could use hijackthis
http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html

dont use hijackthis unless you really know what your doing its very easy to render a pc useless with this app. I only use it when all else fails, combofix will usally clean any pc. Hijackthis is last resort before a reformat.

On3s&Z3r0s

I've seen many of the cleaners mentioned miss rootkits on Windows XP, so I'd run a couple of different ones. I've had good luck with combofix too, but you definitely need to make sure your anti-virus software is shut down before running that one.

I'll say again though, just because you could spend your time trying to deal with this doesn't mean it's a good idea. Or as we say at work... don't try to come up with an engineering solution to a people problem.