Our staff has been receiving a number of email complaints and request
for help to remove some software by the name "Coupons and Offers" off user
computers. CouponsAndOffers.com and it's parent company,
Poise Media Inc., are NOT affiliated with the company distributing that
software in any way. But of course, we'd like to help those who are
annoyed by this intrusive program.
First I want to mention that we were unable to find the software and install
it to our PC for testing, so we have no idea how it works first hand, aside from
what we were told by some of the users in their email complains. From what we
have read, it sounds like software that can be categorized and known as "Spyware",
"Adware" or "ParasiteWare". What it does is, it runs in the background of
your computer with or without your knowledge, and usually shows advertising in a
form of pop-up. These pop-ups may seem like they are coming from websites that
you are visiting, but they are really just coming up from the Spyware software
that is running in the background of your PC.
So you are asking how did I get this program? The companies usually
distribute it or "bundle" it along with many free programs available on the
internet, such as the popular Kazaa software. So in most cases, you think you
are downloading one software, but it really installed two or more programs
without your knowledge.
How can you remove these Spyware or Adware programs? Unlike most software out
there, the programs don't come with removal tools, or in some cases there
are removal tools, but they don't completely clean out the program. We recommend
using (and we use this ourselves) a free Spyware removal program called
SpyBot
which can be downloaded at
Download.com.
This program will find and remove pretty much any kind of Spyware program that
exists today. After downloading and installing SpyBot, make sure you check the
updates, because if you are not running the latest version of SpyBot, it might
not find some of the newer programs out there.
For more details and other removal instructions, visit Symantec's
security report on this program.
Coupons and Offers Editorial Team
