IDP.Generic or Identity Protection Generic is a threat name when your antivirus program detects a malware threat on your PC. Such viruses are designed to infiltrate your PC stealthily so, you won’t find any clear symptoms on your PC but in the background, the malware is doing its job and stealing your information.
Although such viruses are stealthy and won’t show any clear symptoms, you will generally experience:
- High resource usage
- Slow and laggy performance of your PC
- Random windows and programs opening without the user opening anything
- Frequently BSoDS or Blue-Screen of Death
- High network activity
- Programs crashing unexpectedly without any reason
- Opening and redirection to suspicion and malware websites.
Behavior of IDP.Generic Malware
The behavior of malwares like IDP.Generic include:
- Downloading and installing other malware
- Keystrokes recording
- Information stealing and sending it to the remote server
- Give remote access of your PC to the hacker
- Malicious advertisement and pop-ups are injected into every web page that you visit
- Random text on web pages is converted to hyperlink that leads to a malicious website/program
- Fake browser pop-ups for fake updates and virus warnings
Do remember one thing that this can also be false positive detection. A false positive detection is when you installed a legitimate game or software and the antivirus program detects a legitimate, harmless file as IDP.Generic malware and either quarantines it or removes it.
However, that is not always the case. All detections aren’t false positive. Sometimes a real threat is detected and you get informed about a potentially malicious file on your PC.
Hackers also used the trick of disguising malicious files as legitimate by making the name of the file similar to a legitimate and in such cases it becomes hard to detect these threats. So, you should perform a double-check with another antivirus program and perform a virus scan of your PC with that antivirus program to ensure that there is no malicious file present on your PC.
If more than one antivirus program detects a file as IDP.Generic malware then you should be cautious and remove it immediately from your PC to prevent any further harm as it can lead to the proliferation of other viruses and cause serious problems for you such as data loss, financial information loss, personal information loss, etc.
Infiltration of IDP.Generic to PC
One thing that is for sure that malwares such as IDP.Generic or Win32:Malware-gen can’t infiltrate your PC without user involvement. The user is involved in the infiltration of such malwares, one way or another. Some common methods by which these malwares can infiltrate and enter your PC are:
- Cracked/Pirated Software
- Software cracking tools
- Spam campaigns
- Spam emails
- Spam email attachments
- Installation of an unknown, untrustworthy software
- Opening a malicious executable file
So, in short, the common method by which malwares such as IDP.Generic can infiltrate your PC is by the installation of a malicious program, downloading a malware file, or opening a malicious executable file.
How to avoid the infiltration of such malwares?
Prevention is better than cure so, it is important to avoid installing such malwares and you can do so by following these tips:
- Download softwares from official websites only.
- Avoid downloading a cracked/pirated program as such programs have been altered and can bring malware into your PC without you even knowing about it.
- Always keep your Windows updated to the latest version because the latest version has all the security patches available.
- Do not open any email from unknown senders and even if you open one, don’t download the attachments as these attachments can be malicious.
- Use a reputable antivirus/antimalware software that is able to provide you real-time protection against viruses and malware.
- Don’t click on any suspicious links or pop-ups.
How to remove IDP.Generic Malware on Windows?
If the detection is a false positive then you should update your antivirus program because these detections can also be caused because of an outdated antivirus program. Update your antivirus program to the latest version and then perform a scan to see if it still detects it or not.
If you are certain that the detection is not a false positive and the file/program is actually a malicious one then make sure that you remove it immediately to avoid any harm or damage.
If your current antivirus program is able to detect this malicious then remove it immediately. However, if your antivirus program is unable to do so then you should download and install a reputable antivirus/antimalware program such as Malwarebytes which can easily detect and remove such malwares and viruses from your PC.
If you can’t remove the virus from your PC with an antivirus program then you should consider performing a system restore to a previous point or a full system restore.
After doing so, your PC will be now free of the IDP.Generic malware and should work just fine. If you have an antivirus installed and it still allowed this malicious file/program on your PC then you may want to consider changing your antivirus program as it is not performing its function optimally and is unable to detect such malwares.