Warn users about the ‘most costly’ scam of 2010
March 16, 2010 by Sam NarisiPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Security
Security firm McAfee has been warning computer users to recognize and avoid hackers’ latest go-to tactic:
Scareware.
Victims of the scam see a phony pop-up ad that tells them their computer is infected with a virus and they need to buy an anti-virus program. Those that fall for the ruse shell out money for the software, which turns out to be malware that steals personal information.
McAfee says its seen a 660% increase in scareware scams over the last two years, along with a 400% increase in reported incidents over the last 12 months. Scammers make an estimated $300 million wordlwide with scareware hoaxes, PCWorld reports.
Alert users in your company to the scam, letting them know the legitimate anti-virus software already installed on your network is more trustworthy than a random pop-up ad.
DocuCrunch.com delivers the latest IT and Imaging news once a week to the inboxes of over 200,000 IT and Imaging professionals.
Click here to sign up and start your FREE subscription to DocuCrunch!
Tags: anti-virus, McAfee, scareware
March 18th, 2010 at 11:50 am
The other big trend for 2010 will be RANDSOMware. Randsomware encrypts data on your hard drive, effectively holding it hostage until you put in a credit card number.
Once the user puts in valid credit card data, expecting to be charged $10 or whatever the randsomware is asking for, they are charged thousands of dollars as their credit card is exploited.
There are openly-available “hacks” to safely remove the most popular randsomware floating around right now.
March 18th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
it boggles my mind how the folks selling the malware are allowed to continue this scam year after year – it’s not like they are hard to find – it’s the same ones, they have annual updates and rename their stuff with the extention 2008 – 2009 – 2010 ~ this isn’t new ~