Shields Up!: How to spot and avoid scareware

This week’s column is all about the scourge of scareware. Most of us have seen it at one time or another as we surf the web. A pop up will suddenly appear with dire warnings that your system is infected or critical errors were found in your registry. Clicking on it brings up a site for a program that claims it can fix everything-for a fee. The price ranges from $29.95 to $50. Once you pay and download the program, sure enough it does a scan, finds the problems and fixes them all. What a relief, right? Not really. You never had any infections or errors at all. The only thing that got cleaned out was your wallet. A scammer just succeeded in scaring some cash from you.

That’s right. The whole concept of scareware is actually pretty simple. Just trick someone into thinking they have critical issues with their computer and need your program to fix it. It’s big business for cybercriminals.