W3i.IQ5.fraud

[Alicia79]

Hi,
Apologies ahead of time if this is a common issue - I'm not very familiar with this forum yet.
Today Spybot found something called W3i.IQ5. fraud. It looks as though it's gone (in Spybot's 'recovery'). I re-ran another scan and all is clear. I'm going to run various other scans - Avast! SuperAntiSpyware, & Malwarebytes.

How serious is W3...fraud? I try to be meticulous about everything so I'm not sure how it got onto my system (two days ago the scan was clean). Should I start changing passwords? Also, is it okay to leave something in 'recovery,' or should I purge it?

Thanks!

[Zenobia]

Hello.
The manual removal page on this forum has this description for W3i.IQ5.fraud:

Threat Details:

Categories:

• adware
• downloader

Description:
W3i.IQ5.fraud is supposed to be the legit 7zip or other freeware installer. Instead it is a netinstaller which tries to fool the user via unusual graphical user interface to install adware. W3i is also trying to make it look like 7zip and other free software is their own product which is practically theft.

From the description,I'd probably guess it's a mediumish type of threat.
Spybot finds false positives once in a blue moon or so,so you should probably leave W3i.IQ5.fraud in recovery for at least a couple days,just in case it needs to be recovered.

[Alicia79]

*phew* Thanks for the info, Zenobia.
I'm relieved to hear it's not too too severe of a threat (the "fraud" bit scared me). I don't recall installing or downloading anything recently.

I'll leave it in recovery for now and hope that's the end of it.

[Zenobia]

You're welcome.