What is Scareware

Scareware is a type of malware designed to trick victims i
n to purchasing and downloading useless and potentially dangerous software. Scareware, which generates pop-ups that resemble Windows system messages, usually purports to be antivirus or antispyware software, a firewall application or a registry cleaner.

Scareware scam

Many websites display advertisements asking you to run a free virus scan, usually when you download something. These advertisements are typical example of Scareware. User trust them, install them and then these small programs show them that their computer is infected with deadly viruses.

Variation of the scareware scam

Indian call centers are becoming the tool in perpetration of the frauds. Few years back there was a huge hue and cry about stealing of the personal information of britons by the call center employees in India and now the Indian call center professionals were found to be used for the purpose of cheating the british residents in a fraud where the free softwares were sold to the British Residents.

According to the reoprts of BBC, the mastermind of the call center fraud, had set up a company, which employed people based in India to cold-call Britons and claim to be working for Microsoft.

The victims, unaware of the scam, would offer remote access to the fraudsters – meaning their computers could be controlled from a different location.

Once given this access, targets’ computers would be made less secure, at which point the scammers would offer, in return for a fee, to install software to fix the problem.

The software installed was available for free on Microsoft’s website however the computer users were charged between £35 and £150 for software Microsoft made available for free.