Why Googling things yourself can hurt your computer

Lisa Hendrickson | May 21, 2014

Call comes in, client says they downloaded Adobe and now they have junk all over their computer, their search engine is messed up and they have pornographic ads on their google page. Yep, it’s happening! Just downloading an easy program like Adobe can do this to your computer, but come on….Adobe Reader is in Google right? Of course it is, but not at the top of your Google search. It’s about 4 down. See my picture below?

It shows you a basic search in Google for Adobe Reader I just did. The real one is the 4th one down, under the “Ads” that is sometimes hard to notice. I know this because the website is actually an Adobe website, not Adobereader.com or something of the like. Very tough to tell these days folks!

But hey Lisa, Adobe is downloaded and works, so what happened?

You did get Adobe, but it was bundled in a “download manager” filled with other junk! Search engine fun and other programs that are annoying. Sometimes you can download up to 20 programs! I have spent over an hour before removing this junk.

So please be mindful when Googling and if you are not sure, don’t do anything and call us to install the programs properly, which will end up being cheaper than a virus removal.

Lisa

612-865-4475