Scareware Becoming More Popular

The BBC has a great article on one of the biggest problems we’ve seen lately at the Technology Help Desk – Scareware.

Scareware is fake software that is pushed by pop-ups that appear when you browse the web. These pop-ups claim your computer is infected with a virus and the only way to clean it off is to click this link or purchase their software. According to the article, there were over 9,000 bogus anti-virus/malware/spyware programs in circulation in December 2008.

The one the Help Desk has seen the most is Anti-Virus 2009 and its variants. Once installed, it takes on average about 8 hours to remove the program, provided we can remove it (we have about 60% success rate).

The Help Desk would like to remind users that if they have any questions about their workstation being infected to give us a call at x1000. Most of the time, we can tell you right over the phone or through VNC if its a valid threat or not. It doesn’t take us much time to setup a scan with Sophos either to verify your computer is clean.