Privacy Center
Privacy Center is a common rogue program that will annoy computer users as long as they are connected on the Internet. Privacy Center will issue excessive pop-up alerts and advertisements downloaded from a remote server. With similar distribution as any other rogue programs, Privacy Center can be acquired by just visiting a website that has malicious scripts used to download and execute the program on the visitors computer. This application can also be obtain by manually downloading the program thinking that it is legitimate anti-virus when deceived by a fake online virus scanner. Once installed, it will issue warning alerts on computer threats and advised users to register the program.
| Type | Rogue |
| Sub-Type | FakeAV |
| Aliases | |
| OS Affected | Windows |
| Detected By | MalwareBytes |
What Privacy Center Does?
An application window will launched and begin scanning the computer.
It will modify Windows Registry and add the following entries:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\software\microsoft\windows\Current Version\run Privacy Center
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Winlogon\”Shell” = “%ProgramFiles%\PCenter\pc.exe”
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Run\”agent.exe” = “%ProgramFiles%\PCenter\agent.exe”
The threat will drop the following malicious files:
- C:\PCenter\pc.exe
- %ProgramFiles%\PCenter\sounds\1.mp3
- C:\PCenter\sounds\3.mp3
- C:\PCenter\uninstall.exe
- C:\PCenter\agent.exe
- C:\PCenter\faq\guide.html
- C:\PCenter\faq\images\gimg1.jpg
- C:\PCenter\faq\images\gimg[Random Numbers].jpg
- C:\%UserProfile%\ApplicationData\PCenter\dbases\cg.dat
- C:\%UserProfile%\ApplicationData\PCenter\dbases\[Random Letters].dat
- C:\%UserProfile%\ApplicationData\PCenter\keys\cg.key
- C:\%UserProfile%\ApplicationData\PCenter\keys\[Random Letters].key
- C:\%UserProfile%\ApplicationData\PCenter\temp\settings.ini
- C:\%UserProfile%\Desktop\PCenter.lnk
How to Remove Privacy Center Manually
1. Restart your computer in SafeMode
- After Power-On the computer, just before Windows start, press F8
- From the selections, Select SafeMode
2. Remove Registry entries that the threat added. You MUST BACKUP YOUR REGISTRY FIRST.
- Click Start > Run
- Type in the field, regedit
- Navigate and look for the registry entries mentioned above and delete if necessary
3. Delete malicious files that the threat added:
- Base on the given location above, browse and delete the file
- If no location is given, click Start>Search> and search for the file.
- If cannot be deleted, press Ctrl+Alt+Del to access Task Manager, see if the file is running in the process. If it is, select the file and click End Process. Perform file delete again.
How to Easily Remove Privacy Center
1. Print this procedure as we need to close all programs running later.
2. Download AntiMalware Application here and save it to your Desktop.
3. Close all open applications.
4. Double-Click on the downloaded mbam-setup.exe to start the installation. If unable to execute, infections on computer is preventing it from running, rename the file mbam-setup.exe to anything (like myfile.exe)
5. Run the installation on the default settings. No changes are necessary.
6. Just before completing the installation, make sure that the following are marked check.
- Update the program
- Launch the program
7. The tool will run and update itself after installation. Close it after the update.
8. Restart your computer in SafeMode
- After Power-On the computer, just before Windows start, press F8
- From the selections, Select SafeMode
9. Click on the icon and start to Perform Full Scan to begin scanning your computer for Privacy Center related files.
10. After scanning, a message will appear stating that the scan is completed successfully. Click OK.
11. Click Show Results and detected threats will be displayed.
12. Make sure that all threats are marked check, then click Remove Selected to begin removal of the malicious files.
13. Exit MBAM and restart your computer.
14. Privacy Center and all its files are now removed from your computer. To guard your computer from this threat and avoid future infections, you may want real-time protection from a full version of anti-malware program..