PC News : Scareware Danger

When we are working with the internet connected computer, suddenly a pop-up window appears with a warning message. This window is either takes the type face (interface) of a real Microsoft error window or it takes the type face of another real software. And also they use trusted brand names and trademarks. This window makes the user become scared. It says "Your computer contains viruses. Do you want to run a virus scan?" like messages. And when the user gets scared, when he/she accepts to scan the computer, it displays that there are many viruses on the computer. And also it says, to remove these viruses from the computer, install a new anti-virus software. And it has to be purchased online by using a credit or debit card.

This is a complete forgery. All the messages that said the computer has viruses, are fake. Even is we purchase and download a anti-virus software and install it, nothing happens.

Put the person who sends these messages, gets a huge amount of money by using the credit/debit card details provided by the user. And also there are possibilities that, the person might send programs to our computer to take its control. And after that that person locks our computer and asks money from us to unlock our computer.

These kind of programs which scares the user and make the user to do something are called "Scareware".

Symantec Corporation, which does various researches about computer security, researched about scarewares' processes from 2008 July to 2009 June. And they found that there are 250 models of these scareware. And also in the second week of October 2009 they found that over 400,000,0 users have given money in vain for these kind of things.

APWG (Anti-Phishing Working Group) counted the no. of scareware programs and found that it was 2850 by the mid of 2008 and it has rised up to 9287 by the mid of 2009. As a percentage it is 583%!

It is a difficult task to identify the people who are sending these scareware to to the internet. So, the corporations which are researching about computer security says that, if computer users are well aware of these kind of fake programs, they can be safe. It is a very simple task to get rid of these scareware. The user must only refrain form installing the software programs which are willing to scan the computer without being requested by the user.