Exposé of a scam
The Internet is teeming with scam artists, One of the more insidious traps is malware that masquerades as anti-malware, a kind of digital wolf in sheep’s clothing. At the Register, Jesper Johansson takes us step-by-step through what he calls “a tale of trickery”. It’s worth reading. It makes it clear that the pop-ups like the one below should never be clicked on.
Johansson concludes with this excellent advice:
This type of malware is very, very disturbing. One can only wonder how many users have been duped into installing ineffective security software, and what happened to their private information and credit card data when they paid for it. The presence of such software, and the overall very high quality of the ruse it presents, is frightening. More than likely, thousands of people have been fooled. In fact, this type of deception has been around for several years now, and it would not still be here if it did not work well.
This should serve as a dire warning to all: be extremely careful what you trust, and question everything that looks even remotely suspicious. For example, no website can run an anti-malware scan on your computer simply by your visiting the site. Any site that purports to do so is almost certainly run by criminal gangs.
No website should ever offer you to download an anti-malware package as soon as you visit the site. Any site that purports to do so is either run by criminal gangs or by an organization whose business practices are so deceptive that you should never consider doing business with it. A reputable site will present you with product information and then leave the downloading decision up to you, not force it upon you. No software that pushes the purchase decision so heavily in your face is likely to be legitimate.
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