An Old Dog Playing New Tricks

One nasty thing that PC users often face, that has been around for a while, is rogue antispyware. It basically has one goal – to rip you off and in the process make the authors a lot of money.

This is the way it usually operates:

1. It will infect PCs by using Trojans, browser security loopholes, deceptive ads and other tricky scams.

2. It will intimidate the PC user with fake security pop-up warnings, system scans, browser redirects, system tray warnings and many other methods to lead the user to believing their PC is badly infected.

3. It will often trick you into buying the full version of the malicious software in an effort to clean your PC and completely ripping you off because what you just bought was useless.

Unfortunately, as as PCMag and BleepingComputer stated earlier this week, rogue antispyware is sinking even lower:

http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2009/02/new_rogue_anti-malware_pushes_fake_pcmag_review.php

The rogue authors have a new scam to keep you from removing the rogue antispyware from your PC. Here’s how it works:

The rogue software changes the HOSTS file when it infects a PC which makes users unable to go to legitimate security sites in order to remove the rogue. This means if you were trying to visit sunbeltsoftware.com to download the most recent version of VIPRE to get rid of a rogue infection, you would be prevented from visiting the website and instead you’d be sent to a rogue website.

The even scarier part is that these criminals are now making sites which look almost identical to respectable product review sites like PCMag.com, but have fake reviews of their rogue product on the fake review site to deceive you into thinking it is a legitimate and effective product. The authors of these fake sites and rogue software even go so far as to post actual product reviews for well reputed software written by well known software review editors, but they switch out the product title with the title of their rogue creation.

Pretty tricky huh?! It’s amazing how much energy they are devoting to scam PC users. You wouldn’t think their trickery would work but it’s surprising how often it does.

My recommendation to avoiding this is to always keep your computer protected with Antivirus/Antispyware software and a good firewall. And beware!