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Scareware- How to recognize it

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Scareware- How to recognize it, deal with it and avoid it

The word for scareware is “Ugly”. It is a very nasty, unkind, worrying experience, and it’s actually as dangerous as it looks. This is not something to take lightly. Scareware can deliver multiple Trojans and things called “Trojan proxy agents” straight into your computer, including keyloggers and other vicious, very hostile things. Learning how to manage online threats is as fundamental as SEO for regular online users and workers, and it’s important to know what to do.
Recognizing scareware
It’s easy enough to spot, because the “scare” factor is part of its operational methods. The scareware event is comprised of a few stages:
• A sudden warning notice, saying you have a security problem. This is usually accompanied by an authentic-looking additional shock like a Microsoft security dialog box.
• The “dialog box”, obviously, needs to be clicked. Except it’s not a dialog box. The entire scareware page is booby-trapped. If you click anything at all, it’ll start to load an .exe file containing the Trojans. (This isn’t as unnecessary or dumb as it might look. Some pages can fire off Trojans without this ritual, but on Windows systems, the administrator’s actions usually call the shots for downloads.)
• The page then loads the Trojans. Not clicking on the .exe file download has no effect. Again, the whole page acts as a dialog box, and whatever you click will start the download.
Enchanting, isn’t it? The result is a computer full of at least 10 Trojans.
How to deal with scareware
• When you see the security warning- Do not click on the page itself. Shut down the tab using your browser.
• Disconnect the router or modem- This prevents any viruses from accessing the internet.
• Run a full scan with your anti virus software- This will find at least some of the viruses, if your computer has been infected. Get rid of them, and run an update on your anti virus software. Use the full anti virus database, (usually on the Tools or Options menus) to increase your chances of getting any malware.
• Get an external check like Windows free Live Care scan, McAfee, etc- These can act as a backup to improve your chances of finding problems.
• Call your bank and tell them you may have a problem- This will make perfect sense to your bank, and they’ll have the issue flagged. (You can also go to the bank and transfer funds to an account which isn’t accessible from your computer as a defensive move.)
• Don’t connect to the internet until you’ve done everything possible- The alternatives here are “safe” or “unsafe”, and there’s no middle ground.
How to avoid scareware
If you’ve got a good anti virus program, you’ll also have live real time monitoring, and the good sites will be marked as OK. That may seem obvious, but the fact is that the “unknown” sites do usually harbor the problems.
• You can also report bad sites to Google. Just search “bad site report”, and tell them what happened.
• Do not use image searches unless it
’s unavoidable. Many scareware attacks don’t come from sites, but from infected images.
Think of these precautions as your own personal “ search engine optimization ”, optimizing your chances of avoiding the scareware issues.

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