‘Scareware’ is what Symantec is now calling the process of using a false security alert to trick the user in to submitting their credit card details to ‘upgrade’ their firewall or antivirus software for a fee of up to £60.
They could hold your computer to ransom where they will stop your computer working or lock up some of your personal information, your photographs or some of your Word documents. They will extort money from you at that point. They will ask you to pay some additional money and they will then release your machine back to you.
If you get a scareware popup on the Web do not click on the popup at all, not even the Cancel and X option. To get rid of the popup prior to infection, access the task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Delete) and in the application’s tab click “end task” on your Web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.)
Symantec, the web analysts provides the new web report which says that more than 40 million people have fallen into the scareware scams in the last 12 months. Many experts saying that there is a rise in the scareware becomes effective because of awareness of fraud identity in the online.
The scareware are also performed as the pop up advertisements that looks like legitimate fonts or style of the well known software provider, which tells the user that their computer security is compromised. On clicking the message, the user redirected to the other websites in order to download the anti-virus measures that expected to clean up the computer. A Symantec senior analyst, Con Mallon said that the attack performed by the scareware is the starting point when compared to the elaborated frauds.
Now there is a raise in the scareware attack and it is important for you to be careful on looking any different name or different look on your machine. Symantec also said that it has identified different versions of 250 scams that netting around £850,000 a year to the cyber criminals. This data has been analyzed from July 2008 and June 2009.
