How criminals use the Internet to take everything you have

A March 24, 2010 Reuters story headlined “Inside a global cybercrime ring” by reporter Jim Finkle leads with this paragraph:

Hundreds of computer geeks, most of them students putting themselves through college, crammed into three floors of an office building in an industrial section of Ukraine’s capital Kiev, churning out code at a frenzied pace. They were creating some of the world’s most pernicious, and profitable, computer viruses.

Every computer owner should read this fascinating story is about Innovative Marketing Ukraine, or IMU, a company that was at the center of a complex underground corporate empire that “built its wealth pioneering scareware — programs that pretend to scan a computer for viruses, and then tell the user that their machine is infected. The goal is to persuade the victim to voluntarily hand over their credit card information, paying $50 to $80 to “clean” their PC.”

The story tells how IMU solved its biggest problem: charge backs from credit card companies after customers complained that the “anti-virus” or “cleanup” programs didn’t work. IMU set up call centers to handle complaints and trick customers into thinking their problem was fixed!

Another quote from the story:

Anti-virus software makers have also gotten into the lucrative business of cleaning PCs, charging for those services even when their products fall down on the job.

Charlotte Vlastelica, a homemaker in State College, Pennsylvania, was running a version of Symantec’s Norton anti-virus software when her PC was attacked by Antispyware 2010. “These pop-ups were constant,” she said. “They were layered one on top of the other. You couldn’t do anything.”

So she called Norton for help and was referred to the company’s technical support division. The fee for removing Antispyware 2010 was $100. A frustrated Vlastelica vented: “You totally missed the virus and now you’re going to charge us $100 to fix it?”

Read this well-researched and documented report. You’ll be much better prepared when a criminal manages to infect your PC.

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