30 million users swallowed the bait of fake antiviruses

Entertainment news and updates blog article

30th October 2008

According to the company Pandalabs, fake anti-virus software has been existing for quite a long time and the popularity of this form of fraud is increasing.
To date, there are more than 7 thousand of such programs, and, according to experts, more than 30 million of deceived users.
First, user`s computer gets infected with the virus special through downloading infected programs from peer-to-peer networks through viruses in e-mail attachments or by visiting Web pages created by hackers. The virus creates an inconvenience for users, simulating “blue screens of death” and in one case, as reported Pandalabs, the desktop covered with crawling cockroaches. After a while, a dialog box appears, claiming that the machine is infected with the virus, and offering to buy “antivirus”.
Many Internet users are aware of the risk of transmitting personal and financial details to unknown people, however, about 3% of those people, according to Pandalabs, provide personal information to intruders pretending antivirus manufacturers. Let`s count: if a package of such software costs, on average, â‚¬ 49,95 in Europe, we can assume that the creators of fake antivirus receive more than â‚¬10 million per month. And it should be taken into account that this figure does not include people who suffered heavy losses, sending numbers of their credit cards.