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..And speaking of viruses.. - 4/24/2010 8:16:00 PM

Missokyst

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I have noticed that a small, what appears to be a microsoft shield appears on the bottom right corner of a variety of internet related Icons, such as AVG or Ccleaner. At first I only saw this on Vista systems (not mine), then I began to see them on Windows 7 systems (not mine), and on Friday they started appearing on Windows XP icons (not mine). It does not cover over the original icon, it just hangs out in the bottom corner over the top.

The shield is either two color (blue and yellow), or a 4 color shield that sort of looks like avg colors. Does anyone know what this is? It would be total supidity for Microsoft to add this image on top of other icons.

What do your security Icons look like?

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RE: ..And speaking of viruses.. - 4/24/2010 8:24:19 PM

ThatDaveGuy69

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Never seen that.
Until a few hrs ago I was using AVG 8 on this laptop. I nuked it this evening and with the fresh install I loaded MS Security Essentials. I'll add a couple other AV apps tomorrow. On my primary desktop I run AVG 8 and just ran updates this morning - nothing like what you describe. Can you post a partial screen print? What version of Windows are you running and what AV?

~Dave

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RE: ..And speaking of viruses.. - 4/24/2010 8:30:07 PM

ThatDamnedPanda

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quote:

The shield is either two color (blue and yellow), or a 4 color shield that sort of looks like avg colors. Does anyone know what this is? It would be total supidity for Microsoft to add this image on top of other icons.

What you're describing matches the description of a Microsoft security icon. Total stupidity never stopped Microsoft from doing anything.

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RE: ..And speaking of viruses.. - 4/24/2010 11:08:26 PM

shallowdeep

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From: California
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What you seem to be describing is part of the User Account Control (UAC) system, a security feature in Windows. A shield overlay on a program's icon is supposed to mean that the program is intended solely for administrators and will require privilege elevation to run. Microsoft has guidelines for proper UAC UI. The idea is to consistently let the user know what actions require privileges - and also to encourage developers to avoid using escalated privileges when they aren't really needed. If the shield overlays are showing up on programs where they didn't appear before you might have some problem, but they're perfectly normal for administrator-only programs.

I'm assuming you mean shields like those below.

Attachment (1)

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RE: ..And speaking of viruses.. - 4/25/2010 3:06:07 PM

Missokyst

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Yes those are exactly the Icons. Since I have shut off the User Account Control on both drives (vista and win7) I never saw them on my system, but I have seen them on many client computers. However.. XP does not have UAC as far as I know, yet I saw that same overlay recently on top of XP icons.

This is a dangerous idea and stupid from Microsoft from my point of view since many of the fake alerts use those same tactics to fool people into installing, using and buying their crap products.

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