How to Remove Security Essentials

Not to be confused with the legitimate Microsoft Security Essentials, Security Essentials is a rogue antivirus. A rogue antivirus is a program that pretends to be an antivirus, and displays false threats that force the customer to buy their program. Security Essentials can be hard to remove, so I'll give step by step instructions on how to remove Security Essentials, and then I'll give you a brief question and answer about rogue antiviruses.

1. Open up task manager (ctrl alt del) and find the program "security_essentials"

2. End the process

3. Restart your computer in safe mode

4. Open up Internet Explorer or whatever browser you use, and go to malwarebytes.org

5. Download/install and update Malwarebytes

6. Run a quick scan

7. Restart your computer

8. Go to http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix and install combofix

9. Close every window that's running (including this one) and run combo fix

10. Restart your computer

Now Security Essentials is removed from your computer!

Q. Wait... I never installed this. How did I get infected!?

A. Rogue antiviruses are installed in a lot of different ways. You could of downloaded and installed it yourself, or you could have been hit by a drive by download, and it installed to your computer on its own.

Q. What makes it a "rogue" antivirus?

A. As you may know, an antivirus is a program that looks for viruses on your computer. ROGUE antiviruses don't scan your computer at all, but pretends too, and it displays fake results that make you want to buy their fake program.

Q. Why do people make these programs?

A. Why do you go to work? To make money. The people that make rogue antiviruses make A LOT of money .

Q. How can I prevent from getting these 'rogue antiviruses' in the future?

A. Download the "Mywot" add-on for Firefox at mywot.com. This will tell you which websites are dangerous or not. Also, before you download something, like a antivirus, do some research on it, so you know if it's good or not.