Windows Defender Falsely Identifies Alexa Toolbar as a "Trojan Downloader"

I talked about the Advantages of Using the Alexa Toolbar in my last post. I mentioned that many anti-spyware programs will identify the Alexa Toolbar as spyware.

Shortly after making that post, I discovered that Windows Defender is now classifying the Alexa Toolbar as a "Trojan Downloader" or "Trojan Clicker." Normally, you would definitely want Windows Defender to identify such malicious software and get rid of it. But you don't want to do that to the Alexa Toolbar.

What is particularly disturbing about Windows Defender's recent classification of the Alexa Toolbar is that you probably would not know that Windows Defender is referring to the Alexa Toolbar. Here is what you see on your Windows Defender screen:

Here's a close-up of the warning so you can see how ominous it looks:

When I saw that the first time, I clicked the "Remove All" button right away! But then I noticed my Alexa Toolbar wasn't working and I eventually put two and two together.

It wasn't easy though because when you click on "Review items detected by scanning" you see:

It might be hard to see, but Windows Defender identifies the Alexa Toolbar as "Win32/VB.BZ" which might be the correct way to label it in computer-speak but I sure the heck didn't know what it was at first. I only identified it as the Alexa Toolbar by scrolling further down that page, where amidst a bunch of codes I don't understand I saw reference to the Toolbar.

To prevent Windows Defender from repeatedly misidentifying the Alexa Toolbar as a trojan, click on the drop-down menu and change it from "Remove" to "Always allow" and then click the "Apply Actions" button on the lower right of your screen.

I found one other blog post about this problem, by Tom Keating, who judging from his bio, has substantial technical expertise. Click here to see his post about Windows Defender labeling the Alexa Toolbar as a "trojan." He offers some more details and some speculation about why Windows Defender might be making this misidentification.

Advantages of Using the Alexa Toolbar

The Alexa Toolbar enables you to immediately determine the popularity of a website because the Toolbar instantly displays the Alexa rank when you land on a website. The Alexa rank is based on number of unique visitors. Yahoo enjoys the Alexa #1 ranking, followed by MSN, Google, YouTube, and MySpace.

In addition to ranking data, the Toolbar can also tell you which sites link to the website you are visiting; whether the website is increasing or decreasing in traffic volume; related sites, based on which sites other visitors go to; and other useful bits of information.

I also find the pop-up blocker provided by the Alexa Toolbar to be the easiest to use of several I've tried because it first gives an option to block the pop-up or not. This is useful because there are many instances when you want to see a pop-up--usually because you have clicked on a link that pops up a new page for you to read. The blocker also gives you the option to automatically classify the page you are on as "okay" for pop-ups.

With typical pop-up blockers you have to

• Realize something was blocked--not always easy when the signal of a blocked pop-up is a small indicator on a toolbar;
• Go back to tell the blocker that you actually do want to see that page;
  
• Add the page to a list of approved pages so it is not blocked again; and then
• You often have to click again on the original link.

The Alexa Toolbar pop-up blocker does all that in one step instead of three or four.

But there are two other reasons to use the Alexa Toolbar:

1) Whenever you visit your own website(s), the Alexa Toolbar "counts" your visit toward it's calculation of Alexa rankings. It might seem trivial but every little bit counts. I have seen my Alexa ranking increase by 30,000 in a few weeks simply by using the Alexa Toolbar. (Note that the recent rapid increase in web usage in Asia, particularly in China, has caused many Western web sites to lose ranking. You will need to keep this in mind as you watch your Alexa ranking).

2) Kim Klaver's Top 50 Network Marketing Companies list and Top 40 New Network Marketing Companies list are both based on Alexa rankings. If you have the Toolbar installed, whenever you visit your company's website, you will be helping your company increase its Alexa ranking.

Click here to download the Alexa Toolbar courtesy of Best-MLM-Opportunities.com (my main website).

Please note that many anti-spyware programs will label Alexa as spyware or as a "threat" to your computer. Alexa does track website visits--that's how it achieves its ranking statistics. But the company (Amazon.com owns Alexa) does not sell your individual information or provide your surfing history to anyone.

Therefore, you need to either ignore warnings from your security program about Alexa or configure your program to stop treating Alexa as spyware.

Also note that you can use the Alexa Toolbar with Internet Explorer only.

Click here to visit the Alexa Toolbar FAQ's page for more detailed information about the Alexa Toolbar.