A very thorough letter was sent from Coupons .com to Hip2Save explaining in further detail the safety of their website:
Hello Couponers! My name is Rich and I am a Support Engineer at Coupons .com.
We are sorry to hear about these reports of viruses on our website and we have already reviewed our code to make certain that this issue is not being caused by or originating from our end.
The problems being described here indicate that some of our users are being tricked by a browser redirect trojan that has been sitting latently on their local machine since it was downloaded, most likely from a questionable file sharing network file, questionable email, questionable website, even an instant messaging program with sharing rights enabled.
The trojan modifies your web browser to redirect to a malicious website that is made to look like a Microsoft “My Computer” window running a fake virus scan that is detecting non-existent threats on their computer. This is not a real Microsoft window, you are not seeing a real virus scanner, the threats being shown do not really exist. There is only one virus here and that’s the one that keeps sending you to the malicious website. In that sense it is a pretty mild threat to your computer other than being very annoying and possibly scary.
This is a popular scam that resurfaces around the web from time to time. It is meant to draw people into downloading a real trojan that will continue to annoy its victims with more fake virus alerts even more persistently until they submit to and purchase a fake program that does absolutely nothing. The scammer can then attempt to use that credit card information for other purposes. Please do not follow the instructions on this malicious website. When you see it, close your browser.
There is a lot of useful information on the Internet on how to identify the source of and remove the trojan responsible for this annoyance. Please visit Google and search for “Fake AVG 2011″ for more information about this issue and how to remove it from you computer.
Again I wanted to reassure you that Coupons.com is not infected with a virus, and is not infecting your computer with a virus either. Our website is likely being targeted by the redirect virus on your computer by some logic unknown to us, probably because it is a popular site in your browsing history. My recommendation is to research the issue through Google, follow the solutions to neutralize the redirect virus, and use caution moving forward when downloading unknown emails, files, and websites to ensure it doesn’t find its way back on to your machine again.
*We now return you to your previous coupon printing experience!*
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