Shut down XP Antispyware 2010 and avoid AntiMalware Pro

If you're the one in your family with the computer know-how, relatives may call on you as a sort of personal Geek Squad. So it was with my father-in-law, deeply troubled last week in the face of a spirited badware attack. Many of us have been asked to spend an afternoon cleaning spyware off the parents' or grandparents' family computer, and know a little judicious application of Avast!'s free active defense and the classic Spybot usually does the trick and doesn't fail to impress.

Not so, however, with the beastie I tried to outwit for half a Saturday recently. It's important you be aware of this one, too, as it's still infecting machines.

XP Antispyware 2010 has been around a couple of years under a range of disguises. Its origins areUkranian. In the space of about a year scammers in the U.S. bilked more than a million consumers into buying XP Antispyware, one of its variants or a similar bogus spyware cleanser, according to the FTC, which asked a local court to halt advertising campaigns via Google ads and elsewhere.