Computer Spot

It’s actually an ingenious way to attack someone – pretend to be a cop, a security guard, a watchdog.  people take one look at your badge and trust you – while you rob them blind.

It’s trick, whose efficacy is not lost on those who make viruses and other unworthy software – pretend to be antivirus software, and people actually pay you to have your infect their computers and rob them blind.

Google finds that this message is increasingly popular among makers of scammy software. So how do these people actually get people to believe in fake antivirus software?

They seek the good old trusted route of going with spam, ads all over the place and clever search engine manipulation to place their fake antivirus software websites on top so that people will click on them.

But they adopt all kinds of creative new ways from time to time. For instance, in spring this year, people using Firefox on Windows found themselves the target of a fake antivirus software attack.

These users would be minding their own business when they would find a pop-up sitting in the middle of their screen that looked exactly like a Microsoft update dialog box.

It would say that it was the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool and that there was an update due. Anyone who believed that and accepted the update would end up installing a virus.

The remarkable thing about this particular example of fake antivirus is that they’ve done a spot on impersonation of a Windows Update dialog box.

In general, you can be sure that you’ve downloaded fake antivirus software when you find that it asks you to pay right away without offering you a trial.

Basically, you don’t even need to go that far to know that you’re dealing with fake antivirus. Real antivirus will never just pop up when you’re minding your own business, and tell you that you’ve been infected.

The reputable software makers just wait for you to come looking for them. So if you are actually infected, how do you get rid of the infection?

Sometimes, they just won’t let you even run your antivirus. They keep nagging you and telling you that something isn’t right.

Usually, if you dismiss the message enough times, you can actually go and fire up your antivirus and get rid of the problem. If that doesn’t work, you could try renaming your antivirus software explorer.exe. That usually works.

In general, if you have trouble using your computer in any way after fake antivirus software infects it, try to boot into Safe Mode to try regaining control over the computer. You can do that by pressing the F8 key when your computer is starting up.