Scareware On The Rise

My brother's PC got infected by malware that stemmed from an anti-virus pop-up advertisement a while back. It took a lot of hard work and time before we managed to remove all traces of the problem from his system. After that, we decided to go online and find out more about this threat in order to let our friends and family know about it and make sure that they would not get infected the same way we did.

We found out that instances of this sort of anti-virus or anti-malware scams are on the rise, with scammers preying on the less tech-savvy public, 'warning' them that their computers have been infected and offering to fix the problem for a small fee. These scammers shamelessly exploit the worries of these consumers, who are concerned about the safety of their computers, and try to sell them fake security software or system repair tools. Their goals is to both make a quick buck, and also at the same time gain access to your machine in order to perform nefarious tasks such as key-logging or phishing, or even to obtain confidential information such as your passwords or credit card numbers. This might lead to even more serious consequences than merely having your computer compromised, such as identity theft, as well as misuse and abuse of your credit card information.

A very popular method used by these cyber crooks is the 'fake scan' scam, which entices users by inviting them to perform a free scan of the user's computer with 'no strings attached'. Unfortunately, no matter how clean or virus-free the computer is, the scan will still return misleading results stating that your computer has a large amount of threats and is seriously compromised. They might then offer to get rid of the problem by downloading and installing one of their applications. After this is done, the problem starts. The browser and operating system is hijacked, virus alerts and warnings will keep popping up, and the system will slow down till practically unusable. The most ingenious part of this scam is, after all the harm has been done, the scammers will offer to genuinely fix the problem, for a small fee payable by credit card. So they will take your money and get your credit card information, just to remove a small problem created by them in the first place.

So my suggestion to my family and friends, as well as all members of the general public, is to be smart when surfing the net and downloading applications. Make sure everything is downloaded from reputable sites, investigate the background of the companies before purchasing software from them, and lastly always be careful when responding to pop-up ads on your computer.