Here's one for you guys, especially the people living overseas who have probably never seen this commercial before. These have been airing quite frequently in the US. This commercial is for My Clean PC which supposedly makes your computer run like new when in reality its just a registry cleaner that wants to charge you money. The whole thing is presented like a rouge A/V and the same company often switches names. They have called themselves My Clean PC, Double My Speed, Max My Speed and more.

Now here is their commercial which annoys me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9m2s6QG1Q0

Does it take more than 3 seconds for your email to load?
-What a generic question, are we talking webmail or outlook? I know people with older computers and slower connections which have slow loading email and nothing is wrong.

Permanent Damage
-I have yet to hear of a virus, etc that caused permanent hardware damage. I suppose somebody could make one that disabled the cooling fans, but most viruses want to keep your computer working and online so they can spam, etc.

This whole thing just annoys me, because they are fraudulent and will end up ripping off people who are computer novices. You can try out their software in a virtual machine if you want to see how ineffective it is when you can get CCleaner, Malawarebytes and many decent A/V products for free. I ran their software on a fresh installation of Windows and it came back with a bunch of registry errors. Most of them were simply undefined or blank keys such as software and Windows options.

Two words: That's annoying.

I saw one of these the other day and went on a ten-minute rant about all the inaccuracies and misleading statements in it. My grandmother didn't understand a word I was saying, but she DEFINITELY got that I didn't want her trying to use that.

iirc i've heard of this before..

They're probably rogues anyway... Anything that boasts info like that is fishy...

that is exactly what I say.

No, they aren't rogues. They check your computer for free, but then make you pay for it to actually fix the problem.

And you've taken this product apart to have a look? I've seen plenty of rogues on the TV.

Umm no, I have used one myself. They aren't rogues because they do not take over your whole computer.

1 does not answer for all of them. I've seen it happen before... and had to clear up the mess...

The program does act like a rouge when it wants you to pay money to remove the stuff it found in the scan. But, these won't take over your computer, you can usually uninstall them pretty easily without any lasting effects. So they aren't technically doing anything illegal but the fact that they have changed the name of the product several times shows that they are trying to cover something up.

For example:

http://mycleanpc.com/home.html?ref=MyCleanPC.com

I've seen proper take-over-your-pc style rogues advertised on TV before. That's the sort of stuff I've cleaned before too.

I heard of My Clean PC, and found there are a lot of inaccuracies involved with the commercial, was it written by people who don't know anything about computers?

You notice that adding comments was disabled for the video? They don't want any knowledgeable technicians to step in and offer accurate information. I call bull****.

This article is over a year old, but I'm sure nothing has changed:

http://michaelquale.com/911130/mycleanp ... -look-out/

When I downloaded that software, my antivirus swooped in and called it malware.

Gosh, is there an advertising agency in the US like we have in the UK?

I've seen these ads, but I did not even this was a rogue. I never used it.

I think it is fake. Really. "A 7 year computer faster than a new one"?. Fake.

The software is a joke, but the commercial is definitely real. It airs on US TV quite a bit and drives me crazy. I don't see why they are allowed to false advertise. Imagine if a company said they could make your old car run like new, when in reality all they did was change the oil, but made it sound like they were doing a whole lot more. Thats what this company does.

There are even such dumb things as obviously fake footage of XP running the software, with a photoshopped progress bar in the middle of the screen, cleaning the registry incredibly slowly. Dammit people.

The service is obviously a joke but it's real. Has anyone seen the one with the terrible over-acting where the guy is using a Mac and it bluescreens?

Not strictly true. There are viruses that write themselves to the BIOS via flashing, rendering it unusable and forcing you to either replace the BIOS chip or shell out money for a new motherboard. Thankfully, they're pretty rare.

And personally, I haven't heard of such a virus since the 90s.

Like I said whats the point in trying to do that. First of all, wouldn't any modern BIOS want to verify a checksum or something before letting a virus flash it meaning you'd have to target a specific motherboard. It seems most viruses today just want to send spam, show you advertisements, try to get money, etc. They don't want to break your computer.