High demand for Windows Movie Maker leads to a new scam

Microsoft launched Windows Movie Maker back in 2012 as a part of Windows Essentials package. The software has been helping amateur editors make videos since then. With the introduction of Story Remix and Movie Moments in Windows 10, Microsoft finally took out the download link for Windows Movie Maker from the official website.

Unfortunate for Microsoft, users are still interested in the old simple but powerful editing application and don’t want to use the new apps. According to Google’s search tools, there are more than ten million searches for “movie maker” and “windows movie maker” every month. Seeing this, someone decided to take undue advantage and make a scam application which looks exactly like Windows Movie Maker but will ask you to pay $30 once you go and save the video. It has an official download website windows-movie-maker.org which appears on the top of the Google search results when users enter “movie maker” keywords.

Anti-virus company ESET says Windows Movie Maker is the third biggest threat worldwide. Although the software doesn’t inject any code to hijack or encrypt the computer, it does strip the user of $30.

How to remove the software

In case you’re one of the users who has downloaded the software, we recommend you to follow the instructions below to uninstall it.

• Go to Start > Control Panel -> Uninstall a program (or Add/Remove Programs)
• In the list of installed programs, find Windows Movie Maker and click Uninstall button.
• Follow the uninstallation guide.
• Once uninstalled, download any anti-malware like Malwarebytes and run a full scan just to be on a safe side.

If you’re running an old version of Windows, we recommend you to upgrade to latest Fall Creators Update which comes with Story Remix app which you can use for editing. Additionally, you can also download Movie Moments from the Store for editing videos.

[appbox windowsstore 9wzdncrfj3md]

Via: Forbes; Welivesecurity