It is bad enough that the economic conditions around the world are not the best but somehow hackers want to keep people down by spreading illicit security programs such as the newly discovered ‘CleanThis’ application. CleanThis (Clean This) has been discovered by security researchers to be a fake anti-virus program that resembles the legitimate HijackThis program developed by security company TrendMicro.
Computer users who have encountered CleanThis have reported several instances where CleanThis has eliminated the ability for them to simply access their desktop. Additionally, CleanThis has been found to lead users to a purchase page that asks for credit card information to begin the process of buying a full version of the CleanThis program. It has been confirmed that a full version of CleanThis does no more than the free one that is usually installed through a Trojan horse download. CleanThis will pretend that it can detect and remove viruses and other malware on a PC but it will not even if you purchase a ‘full-version’.
How Can You Remove CleanThis?
CleanThis can be very difficult to manually remove if you are an inexperienced computer user. Not to mention, CleanThis has been known to populate the Windows Registry with many different entries and removing the wrong entries could render a PC damaged or useless. The use of a reputable antispyware or antivirus tool is recommended to safely remove CleanThis from your Windows computer.
To easily remove CleanThis, find the following process and end them in the task manager. After that is done, delete each related CleanThis file from your hard drive. In additional to locating the following processes, it is recommended that you delete the CleanThis registry entries listed below as well. It is also a good idea to uninstall the CleanThis application via your add/remove programs function found in the Windows Control Panel if your system recognizes CleanThis has an installed program.
CleanThis files (and folders) to remove:
- %UserProfile%\Application Data\completescan
- %UserProfile%\Application Data\install
- %UserProfile%\Application Data\gog.exe
- %Documents and Settings%\[User Name]\Desktop\CleanThis.lnk
- %Documents and Settings%\[User Name]\Start Menu\Programs\CleanThis.lnk
- %Documents and Settings%\[User Name]\Application Data\[RANDOM CHARACTERS].bat
- %Documents and Settings%\[User Name]\Application Data\gog.exe
- %Windows%\Tasks\At[RANDOM CHARACTERS].job
- %UserProfile%\Application Data\completescan
- %UserProfile%\Application Data\install
- %UserProfile%\Application Data\gog.exe
- %Documents and Settings%\[User Name]\Desktop\CleanThis.lnk
- %Documents and Settings%\[User Name]\Start Menu\Programs\CleanThis.lnk
- %Documents and Settings%\[User Name]\Application Data\[RANDOM CHARACTERS].bat
- %Documents and Settings%\[User Name]\Application Data\gog.exe
- %Windows%\Tasks\At[RANDOM CHARACTERS].job
CleanThis registry entries to remove:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon “Shell” = “%Documents and Settings%\[UserName]\Application Data\gog.exe”
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run “CleanThis”
