Spyware, Malware, Antivirus?

[ChatIndia]

I was searching for image in Google image
*****

and then i clicked on the first image of second row

****

and something odd happened.

Should i format my laptop to prevent my credit card and other information for being stolen.

[Smith6612]

Describe to us what happened. You're making us shoot blanks! Obviously we only have so many bullets to use.

[ChatIndia]

google image redirected me to an antivirus website. That website scanned my laptop and detected several virus and download started automatically. tho i rejected the download I am little afraid. Its a new laptop and new operating system. I don't wanna format nor i want keylogger or spyware in my laptop.

And those bullets are gifted by descalzo

[essellar]

Paranoia is a good thing when it comes to computing, both as a user and as a site owner/developer.

What you've experienced is called "scareware" these days, and yes, you should assume that some damage was done until you can prove to yourself otherwise. One of the first things these malicious "antimalware" programs do is to interfere with any existing AV software you may be running, so you may not be able to count on anything you have installed to clean things up for you.

You can try a trusted AV site to do an online scan (if you're running a Windows version, go to the Rogue Security Software page at the Microsoft Security site). Just keep in mind that these things are often all but impossible to remove because part of the package is specifically designed to get around real AV software. It may not allow you to go to known AV real web pages, and may keep you from running known good antimalware programs (like MalwareBytes).

If part of the package was delivered and you're prevented from using AV to clean it up, you may have to resort to a system recovery, which is annoying -- but it's better than the alternative.

[techairlines]

google image redirected me to an antivirus website. That website scanned my laptop and detected several virus and download started automatically. tho i rejected the download I am little afraid. Its a new laptop and new operating system. I don't wanna format nor i want keylogger or spyware in my laptop.

And those bullets are gifted by descalzo

It's likely that you just visited some website that got hacked. I've seen a lot of websites get hacked where it would redirect all visitors with a referrer of Google to some random fake antivirus scan.

Here's a video WOT made a few years ago that might be relevant to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owZnp...ailpage#t=149s

In many cases, visiting the URL directly (without going through Google) doesn't cause the redirect, since this makes it more difficult for the site owner to find out what's going on. Many of these don't do any harm if you don't download, but this isn't always the case. It's better to be safe so see essellar's response above.