In its midyear report on cyber security, Cisco Systems names rogue anti-virus software the cybercrime product of the year.
There is a lot of great software that you can get for little or nothing from the freeware and shareware communities.
There is also a lot of very dangerous free software being pushed by cyber criminals. At the top of this year’s list is fake anti-virus and anti-spyware software. When I say “pushed” I mean that literally. Criminals inject malicious software into legitimate websites. Thousands of reputable sites are newly infected every day, and when you click on one of them, the software is automatically downloaded and infects your PC with a Trojan.
Rogue software is also called “scare ware” because the Trojan displays warnings that a virus has been found on your machine, and it tries to scare you into buying recommended anti-virus software to remove it. You pay for the antivirus with your credit card, and the symptoms of the infection disappear. But the Trojan doesn’t go away. It’s still there, and could be sent on to everyone in your address book, or it could be reactivated on your own PC.
Most forms of malware go to work inside your computer, take control of it, make it part of a botnet, and you’ll never know it. Off-the-shelf anti-virus software seldom detects sophisticated malware.
The good news is that scareware has to announce itself. The moment you see the warning and an offer to buy removal software, you know you have an infection.
What to do. Get out your credit card and call your anti-virus software vendor help desk immediately. A tech will go into your computer remotely and try to find the bad guy’s software and remove it. A good tech usually can fix the problem in an hour or less. Most vendors charge about $4 per minute.
I use and market a service that cleans my computer at no charge whenever my PC acts strangely or I suspect an infection. It’s like having my own IT department.
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