It’s important to always stay vigilant when it comes to protecting yourself from malware. No matter how protected you are it can sneak up on you. Case in point: Earlier today I was visiting a site I’ve visited many times before. The different this time is that the site had logged me out. That means more »

Not long after the news broke that Britain’s Prince William plans to marry long time girlfriend Kate Middleton, hackers started pumping out spam and poisoning search results related to the event. Within 24 hours of the couple’s announcement, image search results for “Kate Middleton” had been poisoned with links leading to “friefox.ddns.pl” which is a more »

Late Sunday night my husband was working on his blog when he decided to check out one of his trackbacks. Bad idea. He was immediately redirected to a fake anti-virus site and even though he knows not to click on anything and shut the browser down via Task Manager, somehow the program, called Vista Internet more »

Fake anti-virus programs were a huge problem in 2009. Scammers poisoned search results, used banner and pop up ads, and compromised legit websites to spread them to unsuspecting users. They pretend to scan your system, pretend to find all sorts of infections, and then insist you must fork over the cash to buy the full more »

Fake anti-virus software has been the scourge of the net for awhile now, but hackers are now taking it a step further and making it even more sinister. Panda Labs says that Total Security 2009 starts out like most fake anti-viruses. It “scans” the victim’s computer and tells them they’ve got a serious infection, then more »

Almost everyone has run across it and perhaps some of you have fallen for it – rogue anti-virus programs. Also known as scareware, these programs are infesting the net, and researchers say they net the scammers behind them a staggering $34 million a month. They work very simply, either a site redirect or a pop up informs the victim that they might be infected with malware, and then begins a fake “scan” of their computer, revealing a plethora of fake infections. The site then tells the now startled and probably worried victim that their software can take care of it for them for just $30. So the victim downloads a fake program, pays and watches as it “removes” the fake infections it found. The scammer just made $30 and the victim is relieved that the infections (which they never really had) are gone. It’s sort of a high tech version of a snake oil salesman.