Users have trouble recognizing fake popups
Malware often uses fake popups and it seems that PC users have trouble distinguishing the fakes from genuine system messages. Science Daily reports:
A new study by researchers at North Carolina State University shows that most Internet users are unable to distinguish genuine popup warnings messages from false ones – even after repeated mistakes. The fake ones were designed to trick users into downloading harmful software.
Experienced users can usually recognize a fake popup but it is a real problem for average users. One factor is the tendency of Windows to issue unnecessary messages. The best choice is to close any popup window that you are not sure about. I gave an example of one scam in a previous post. Never click on anything that wants to download or install something unless you are certain what it is.
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This is a great site! Unfortunately, the reason I found it is that my pc (HP Pavilion, VISTA) crashed–first time in the 10 years I have been online…I have always been very careful about not opening anything I’m not sure of. On Monday I suddenly got an ALERT!! URGENT!!–that my computer was infected with 2 Trojan and 1 worm virus. It said I needed to act IMMEDIATELY!! I paused for about 10 secs since it DID say it was from Windows…but I reminded myself of all the scams and closed the msg and then did a “health” scan–results: no problems. Then I did a quick scan by AVG (NOT the comprehensive) and again no virus’s, etc.
A when I was in the middle of installing SP1, it suddenly shut down and that was it…I got the “blue screen” after starting it up in a very limited safe mode.
I had no idea that you could tell the difference between a real alert and the zillion other “alerts” offering to scan my computer…so it’s ironic that my pc crashed because I always follow the general wisdom of “Never open anything you’re not sure of” –my computer crashed BECAUSE I didn’t recognise that this was a real warning.
I’m using an alien MAC so that I can keep researching ways to fix this…the article on “Command Prompt Switches” is fantastic! I think xcopy will be invaluable in saving my doc and picture files onto a flash drive and then I can be more adventurous about trying different things. At least I’m learning a lot more about Vista than I would ever have known otherwise, plus I’m determined and convinced I can fix this—thanks SO much!
susan