The Gator’s back to school blog for families! (2 of 3)

Here is the second of three tips for parents and commandment number 2 for the kids!

2. Thou Shall Not Push The Easy Virus Removal Button That Just Popped Up!


Fake Antiviral malware has skyrocketed to the top tool of scam artists and identity thieves! There’s good reason for this, we gave these malcontents nearly 6 billion of our hard earned dollars this year alone with its use!

For some background on the menace, Wikipedia in short sites social engineering as: the act of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information that under normal circumstances they would not. I would expound upon this definition as follows: to manipulate the PC user into believing that their PC has suddenly become infected with dangerous viruses and that if they don’t click on the “Easy Remove” button conveniently provided certain doom will follow. Emphasis on “imminent certain doom”!

Therefore fake antivirus is a new class of malware that is very hard for traditional antiviral products to combat. Not being a traditional virus itself, Fake A/V tricks the user into downloading computer viruses and viral tools for scammers to use on your PC. They use these tools to shut off any real antiviral product you use and then down load real virus’s that steal your identity and bank account with it!

What is worse is that there are few tools that combat fake Antivirus as it changes all the time to suite the scammer’s intentions. Their are a few things that you can do though to help prevent an infection:

• Become AWARE of your security suites capabilities, look n feal and operation!
       Keep the subscription current and software updated.
       Know that "No legitimate A/V program will start a scan automatically without consent!
       Read the help files, they are the owners manual!

• Remember and remind yourself that if you don't recognize the name, Don't Click It!
      Ask yourself, did you run a scan or did this just show up?
      Ask yourself does this look like my A/V Suite?
      Are their gross errors in the presentation, look and feel, are you being force to do something?

• If you have one Pop-up on you
      Type on the keyboard (Control, Alt, Delete) or right click on the task bar to bring up the task manager.  
      Click on the applications tab and highlight anything shown as running then click on end task button. If the
      virus is not shown, close out all internet browsers open.

• Clean out your temp files by selecting the contents and deleting them, not the file itself!

• Remember to CREATE A BACKUP of your hard drives data often.
      Use XP’s NT backup program or a program like Norton’s Ghost or Carbonite online backup. Vista and
      Windows 7 have other options as well

You will have to use it to reload the hard drive if the fake A/V gets past you
Do not depend on the “go back” feature of XP, Vista or Win 7, the Fake A/V can hide there and just reinfect you in a day or two.