Virus saying it is an antivirus keeps coming in with games

GameHouse Forums > Support

I have tried to download the free games for the past two days but get a virus that claims to be an "antivirus program" that I need "right away" - I have dealt with these in the past with unknown sites but I would like to trust you guys. Can you check into this?

Posted on Fri Jan 29 18:11:18 PST 2010

I've had the same thing happen to me twice just tonight. That thing that pops up is a VIRUS!!! This is the second time I have encountered a virus from Gamehouse. I came to the forums tonight to see if I could find anyone having a similar problem. I've heard about this type of virus before and even encountered it once myself but as you say I don't expect it from this site. It's a shame that we have to deal with this from a site we PAY to use. I know from past experience that Gamehouse will deny the problem is with them. I'm glad my year of membership is just about over. I'm very disappointed with Gamehouse.

Posted on Fri Jan 29 21:06:18 PST 2010

Me too! I used malwarebytes and everything was okay. I played a few games and had no problems. I clicked on a free game tonight and poof! Antivir popup again. It ONLY happens with gamehouse games. I used my computer on/off all day and things were okay until I clicked to play an online game.

Posted on Fri Jan 29 21:43:53 PST 2010

I had that antivir thing pop up too and it was a bear to get rid of it. Every time I tried to close the screen it would take me to the download page for the program. I finally saw a 'contact us' thing at the bottom of the page so I wrote and asked how to get rid of it and they emailed me uninstall instructions. I thought it was gone for good but it just popped up again a little while ago. I think it comes in through Windows Defender.

Posted on Fri Jan 29 23:29:20 PST 2010

If it is windows defender check your settings. You can correct it and continue with the download. If it your antivirus, you may have to uninstall it. some are very good at working okay for a while then not so good. I had to take one I trusted off because it wouldn't let me download four games from a site I trusted that I had been playing. Sometimes it doesn't work to just disable, some have to be completely uninstalled.

Posted on Sat Jan 30 22:57:46 PST 2010

twila wrote: I had that antivir thing pop up too and it was a bear to get rid of it. Every time I tried to close the screen it would take me to the download page for the program. I finally saw a 'contact us' thing at the bottom of the page so I wrote and asked how to get rid of it and they emailed me uninstall instructions. I thought it was gone for good but it just popped up again a little while ago. I think it comes in through Windows Defender.

What is Gamehouse doing about this?

Posted on Sun Jan 31 12:58:32 PST 2010

i also had the same problem. Antivir, it was a nightmare for me. i did get rid of it. i am a paying customer and feel that the gh installer should do a virus scan (as does another site i've used for years with NO problems whatsoever) prior to installation of their games. I don't know how to contact customer support on this site. I've read enough to conclude that even if I could contact customer service I wouldn't get a reply anyway. Poor customer service is all i can say. Or, NO CUSTOMER SERVICE!

Posted on Mon Feb 01 00:18:53 PST 2010

I have another problem. I have funpass. Everytime I play a game, and exit out, my internet connection is not recognized. I'm online, but some gamehouse software ERROR causes my computer to act as if it not on-line. SO I HAVE TO REBOOT EVERYTIME I LEAVE A GAME WHICH IS SO FRUSTRATING TO ME. I CANNOT STAND IT. I really like funpass BUT, since i've only had it not even a month and have tons and tons of problems, I WON'T BE RENEWING IT, nor will I use gamehouse once my 19.99 is used up. GAMEHOUSE IS A NIGHTMARE I NEVER EXPECTED.

Posted on Mon Feb 01 00:19:25 PST 2010

Hello everyone.

The GameHouse team have been working on finding the cause of this issue. Here is a summary of what's going on and what you can do based on the information we have gathered from our research and testing:

First thing, this piece of Malware did not originate from GameHouse.com. We have made a concerted effort to try and locate any potentially malicious code on our site, in our games and from our ads. Based on our investigation we strongly believe that this is an outside piece of malware that latches onto your browser then proceeds to spawn pop-up ads and fake warnings in an attempt to intimidate you into downloading malware disguised as an anti-virus.

We were able to confirm this based on the research conducted by our I.T. team. Some users visiting our site were redirected by a request "on the client side" (which means the user's own computer) that spawned the malicious window and subsequent browser hijack. Also some research on our end uncovered hijacks with nearly identical behavior affecting other popular sites like Google and Yahoo.

To prevent this you should always make sure that you have the latest critical Windows updates, make sure your Internet security software is up to date, and also make sure that you verify the source of any "warning" before clicking a confirmation. A good guideline is that if the window requesting confirmation is a browser window (and not a window from your Anti-Virus software or from your OS) then it is fake and should be ignored. It is also a good idea to consider enabling your browser’s pop-up blocker. Internet Explorer (IE 7 and IE 8 only) users can find this functionality under the Tools/Pop-Up Blocker menu options. Firefox users can follow this URL for more information on blocking pop-up windows and directions on how to access their Pop-Up Blocker Options:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Pop-up+blocker

If you end up installing this or any other malware, Windows System Restore can restore an infected machine. Also there are many legitimate anti-virus utilities (Norton, Mcafee, etc.) that can help prevent or clean computer virus and other malware infection.

Thank you,
Bill

Posted on Mon Feb 01 13:34:18 PST 2010

Just to add if you have Comcast internet you can download Norton Security Suite free of charge and it doesn't expire.

I really hope you find the issue because Bill I have been bombarded with these messages for quite sometime and one thing we all have in common is gamehouse. I really hope when you find the issue that a fix is offered on your site.

Posted on Mon Feb 01 19:50:54 PST 2010

ffwfire wrote: Just to add if you have Comcast internet you can download Norton Security Suite free of charge and it doesn't expire.

I really hope you find the issue because Bill I have been bombarded with these messages for quite sometime and one thing we all have in common is gamehouse. I really hope when you find the issue that a fix is offered on your site.

Hello 'ffwfire' -- Thank you for your comments; we appreciate your feedback.

Your point about the commonality of GameHouse is true among the small group of people reporting the virus scare messages to us in these forums or via Customer Support. But imagine how filled these boards would be - and how jammed our Customer Support lines would be - if our website was serving malware to its visitors. The number of people reporting this issue is, in fact, quite small.

We have not seen any evidence that points to a GameHouse initiated redirect despite the appearances (seen as an "assurance" by some) to the contrary. That said we're still analyzing every instance reported and I will be contacting you and some other folks to see if you can provide some detailed system information such as Windows registry and hosts file to help us pinpoint the source of these messages. Stay tuned!

Thanks again,
Bill

Posted on Tue Feb 02 10:07:04 PST 2010

This virus called antivir pops up occasionally when trying to download the free game of the day. If it happens to anyone reading this, the solution is simple. SHUT DOWN YOUR PC AND REBOOT. Never click on anything related to antivir as then you are in a pickle and will need to take other measures to rid yourself of it. Not all free games are affected. The Cate West game yesterday was ok, but Marooned was affected ( for me anyway ) I'm glad to see that GH is trying to solve this problem.

Posted on Wed Feb 03 05:39:20 PST 2010

I am SO RELIEVED to know I'm not the only one with this problem! It's been happening to me at random on here for several weeks at least!

Bill, I have an idea it's happening to a lot more people than you realize because a lot of us either don't realize we need to let you know or don't know how to report it.

It seems to happen regardless of what game I'm playing (Shape Shifter and Super TextTwist are two of my recent favorites) or on what computer. I've occasionally logged onto Gamehouse at work when things are slow, and it's happened there at least once, and several times on my home computer. And it ONLY happens on gamehouse.com; I've never seen it on any other website.

Posted on Tue Feb 09 16:03:01 PST 2010

I just had the same thing happen to me. I have been using the free downloads for several months now and suddenly this pops up while trying to download "Lost Fortunes" tonight (twice). I did a virus scan (I have Norton 360) and nothing got through. It has only happened on this website so it is not something coming in on my side as GameHouse contends. I was hoping to contact someone via e-mail directly about this, but I have seldom seen such a convoluted runaround in trying to contact someone, so I guess I just get to post it here. And no, I am not going to let them paw through my registry logs, etc. looking for an answer. If I had to guess, they have someone planting a virus directly on their website by changing a link - yes it can be done - they may have been hacked. I'll just have to keep an eye out from now on.

Posted on Sun Feb 14 19:35:41 PST 2010

I have to say I've had problems with gamehouse games after ive payed for them and downloading them they download fine then after download i click into the game i have brought full version and with dreamday wedding bundle i got Trojan alert as soon as i clicked into the game. Thought may be faulty game then tried downloading married in mahatten and low and behold i get an unspecified malware alert. And it's not when im downloading it is actually after ive brought the game and turned off my router to play the game and i get the threat detection ive got loads of games on here but now i feel i cant trust gamehouse at all they say 100% virus free well i know for a fact that obviously isn't the case.The games obviously have viruses in them. Im going to try one last thing if that doesn't work thn i'm afreaid we're not safe to download from here until they have fixed this.

Posted on Sun Feb 28 14:40:42 PST 2010

Well I have a virus problem as well with one game, Jewel Quest Sleepless Star. Twice now Ad Aware has told me there is a Trojan virus attached to this game. Now I understand that Gamehouse claims these things aren't coming from them but my virus is not asking me to download anything or buy anything else. I only know it is there because Ad Aware keeps removing it and at the same time they remove the shortcut to the game. So my question is if Gamehouse believes none of these viruses are coming from the games then what are we supposed to do. I mean we pay for this and I know I'm not alone in thinking that if there is "no" real solution to this then Gamehouse is going to start losing customers. I belong to another game plan and there has never been a problem with them. I have not had any other problem though with any Gamehouse game except for jewel quest.

Posted on Thu Feb 17 07:28:03 PST 2011

Hi califia,
Its just a false positive, i faced problem before. Try disabling the antivirus/firewall, download or play the game and then enable the antivirus again simple.

Thanks
Jenni

Posted on Thu Feb 17 10:06:02 PST 2011

Hi:

Just came on here to find out what is happening: just as I logged on to play farm Frenzy this evening, my antivirus software showed multiple viruses from gamehouse games (played last night, apparently fine) and transferred them to the virus vault: farm frenzy, cosmic bugs, choclatier games, wedding dash, etc ... about 10 of them so far. I can't access them at all: so have deleted via my control panel: but each time I come to the gamehouse folder, more pop up.

Always trusted the games to be problem free, so a bit worrying: haven't had this at all before: nothing asking me to buy new software or anything like that...

Advice please?

Posted on Tue Mar 08 15:16:03 PST 2011

Hi everyone,

We're really sorry for the experience you are facing. This issue has already been identified by our Technical Team and our engineers are working diligently to identify the cause of the problem and arrive at a fix. We'll keep you posted on our progress.

We appreciate your patience - thank you for playing at GameHouse.

Regards,
Arvin

Posted on Tue Mar 08 16:18:48 PST 2011

I have found an easier way. Not to remove the problem totally, but just so you don't have to turn your antivirus on and off all the time. If it has real time scanning, like avg's resident shield, there should be a section where you can add directories to be ignored from the scanning. In AVG, go to tools, advanced settings, then look down the left for resident sheild, then excluded items under that. Once you have clicked on that, the top button is 'add path'. Click on that then you can browse to whereever you install games from gamehouse. Like I said before, it is an effort and time saver, rather than a solution because I don't know where it comes from either.

Posted on Tue Mar 08 16:25:42 PST 2011

Michael87 wrote: I have found an easier way. Not to remove the problem totally, but just so you don't have to turn your antivirus on and off all the time. If it has real time scanning, like avg's resident shield, there should be a section where you can add directories to be ignored from the scanning. In AVG, go to tools, advanced settings, then look down the left for resident sheild, then excluded items under that. Once you have clicked on that, the top button is 'add path'. Click on that then you can browse to whereever you install games from gamehouse. Like I said before, it is an effort and time saver, rather than a solution because I don't know where it comes from either.

THANK YOU! Thank you, thank you. I hope this "fixes" my problem. I just hate I lost 14 games before I found this! I would have never deleted them if I had seen this first.

Posted on Tue Mar 08 16:33:23 PST 2011

If you have bought the games, they should be on the 'My Gamehouse' tab when you are logged in with your account. You can re-doenload them from there. Adding the directory doesn't bring your games back, but you can re-download them

Posted on Tue Mar 08 16:55:20 PST 2011

I've played a lot of games on GH and have not had any of the problems that
you say that you are having. I do have Norton and a good pop-up blocker.

Posted on Thu Mar 10 20:44:15 PST 2011

I also use Google for downloading my games.

Posted on Thu Mar 10 20:47:01 PST 2011