This is a very common story. You are toodling along, reading your email, surfing the web, updating your Facebook status when you get an alert on your screen. It says, "Your computer is infected" or something similar. The alert looks very official, like it came from your operating system. There's a button to click, so you do. Suddenly, a cool looking scan appears on your screen, showing you progress as it searches your system and finds several viruses and other malware. You think, "How can this be happening? I have security software on my computer?? Did it fail me?"

 

Ladies and gentlemen, what is happening is a pretty sophisticated scam. You got the alert from some malware on a website you visited or an application that you allowed onto your computer. There isn't any real infection on your computer (or it's not likely) but the next steps in the scam are the worst part. After the scan completes, the user is instructed to purchase a special brand of antivirus or security software that sounds legitimate, "Windows XP Spyware" or something like that. So the victim types in their credit card information, downloads what they think is software that will clean their computer. What's really happening is the user has shared their private information and credit details with a cybercriminal AND downloaded and installed malware onto their computer.

 

I hear from these poor people all the time. From their perspective, they don't connect all the dots. Rather, they complain they got these viruses despite having Norton products on their computers, when it's likely their system is actually clean. And then the mysterious charges on their credit card seem to be unrelated fraud which takes an average of 50-plus hours to clean up.

 

Here's a quick video to explain this a bit more. Bottom line, make sure you tell your friends to be very careful of unexpected popup virus alerts that don't appear to be from their security software or operating system. Tell them to click the "x" and close the alert or disconnect from the internet and restart the session. Scan your computer with the Norton or other products on your system and stick to reputable brands and trusted vendors. Never purchase anything online that you haven't thoroughly vetted. A quick search of the product name should show you many thousands of results with words like "complaint", "scam" and "fraud" in the titles.