Complete Systems Design Information Technology Solutions

September 28, 2008

Microsoft and Washington state are anouncing lawsuits against perpetrators of scareware.

Washington State's Attorney General and lawyers from Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement team will announce several lawsuits against "scareware" vendors, who are being charged under Washington's Computer Spyware Act.   While I'm typically not thrilled to hear about lawsuits, I think this particular one is a good thing for most of us, as scareware tricks many people into installing useless programs that often require credit card info payments just to turn off the nag screens once installed.

The scareware typcially gets installed when someone browsing the web gets a popup saying things like - "Virus detected - would you like to remove it?" or "Your computer requires several updates - shall we install now?" or "Get free virus removal tool here" or "Your computer is not optimized - click here to speed it up now".

I'd suggest to anyone browsing the web that gets a popup on a site they don't trust or normally use and it offers to install something or remove a virus or optimize your PC - click on the X in the right hand corner of your browser and just exit your web browser or reboot your PC if you can't close your browser through task manager.   Clicking on yes or no may be all the scareware or spyware requires to install on your computer.

Read the Full Article - Computerworld