Trojan.Adclicker

Trojan.Adclicker is a detection name used by Symantec to identify malicious programs that share the primary functionality of artificially generating traffic to pay-per-click Web advertising campaigns in order to create or boost revenue.

Pay-per-click, or PPC, is a Web advertising technique by way of which revenue is generated each time a user clicks on an advertisement. Advertising revenue may be shared by the parties involved in a number of different ways, but advertisers typically pay advertisement publishers each time a user clicks on one of their advertisements.

If a criminal group — or one of their affiliates — poses as a publisher, they can generate revenue by artificially generating fake 'clicks'. One way in which this may be achieved is through the use of a Trojan horse program that runs on unsuspecting users' computers. Trojan.Adclicker is a detection name used by Symantec to identify these malicious programs.

If a Symantec antivirus product displays a detection alert for this threat, it means the computer is already protected and the Symantec product will effectively remove this threat from the computer.