Thank you so much for this. I highly suspect my computer has something like this. I have had issues since I got it and Norton has been in there multiple times, always thinking they fixed the problem, only for it to reappear.

It's not a lenovo, it's a Asus. I am going to check as soon as I turn it on this morning.

Thanks again

This particular instance applies to Lenovo consumer comps only... (ThinkPads not affected AFAICT). You may have other issues... not the least of which (IMHO) is running Norton... not a fan to say the least. YMMV.

Well, it's better than McAfee. And it has caught more than a few viruses. It also keeps me from clicking on unsafe sites.

Sorry, what's YMMV?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ymmv

"Poppy" Bush was a "better" President than St. Ronnie & Dumbya DimSon, but they all SUCKED, no?

http://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-admits-security-issues-with-superfish-releases-removal-tool/

After playing a dead bat and attempting to push the perception that Superfish was not a security concern, Lenovo has admitted that it was caught napping on the security implications of preloading a piece of adware that installed its own self-signing man-in-the-middle proxy service that hijacked SSL/TLS connections.

"We did not know about this potential security vulnerability until yesterday," Lenovo said in a statement released Saturday, Sydney time. "We recognise that this was our miss, and we will do better in the future. Now we are focused on fixing it."

To that end, Lenovo has joined Microsoft in offering a removal tool to fix the Superfish issue

Lenovo Security advisory: http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish

"We did not know about this potential security vulnerability until yesterday"

Check my reply subthread.

Usually comes bundled with some crapware "helper" application.
Lenovo got caught putting it in brand new computers.
Malwarebytes Antimalware will also find and remove it.
And I agree with EBM, Norton is garbage. I consider it about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
Over half the infected computers that are brought in for me to fix have Norton on them and it didn't do diddly squat for protection.

I will check when I get on my computer this morning.

What do you recommend? A screen door on a submarine isn't what I want

AVG, Avast, Bit Defender. Hell, even MSE or Windows Defender is better than Norton in my book. Norton was pretty good until they were bought out by Symantec-then it turned into crappy bloatware.
I just use MSE in conjunction with the paid for version of Malwarebytes on my computers.

I appreciate the information

This particular instance applies to Lenovo... links worked on my Dell/Gateway boxes.



EDIT: hobbitt709's replies #9 & #11 about covers it.

I didn't mean to misquote or anything.

We're all frenz here

You're my first and best frenz!

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/save-yourself-from-your-oems-bad-decisions-with-a-clean-install-of-windows-8-1/

It's not perfect and takes some work. If I ever were to buy a PC and use Windows on it I think going forward I would wipe a computer and put a vanilla install of Windows on it before using it on a regular basis.

I use Mac Air for most of my daily stuff. I am thinking of getting a PC to use as a media server here at home. I'm thinking of going with a local company that does custom builds since they're willing to not install Windows (or any other OS). That's a big plus not having to pay for a copy of Windows that I wouldn't use anyways since I'd immediately put Ubuntu on it.

want to thank you for these links. It appears I don't have the invading adware mentioned. Thank you again.