FTC Kills Scareware Scam That Duped Over 1M Users

coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today got a court to at least temporarily halt a massive 'scareware' scheme, which falsely claimed that scans had detected viruses, spyware, and pornography on consumers' computers. According to the FTC, the scheme has tricked more than one million consumers into buying computer security products such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus. The court also froze the assets of Innovative Marketing, Inc. and ByteHosting Internet Services, LLC to preserve the possibility of providing consumers with monetary redress, the FTC stated."

Comments

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[Al Dimond]

If you don't like it quit WoW or your other silly games. If anyone asks, explain why. If you can convince others to quit WoW, write the company and tell them why you're doing it. Yes, they might think they need these programs to keep the game balanced. But if you're concerned about your computer's security you should make that decision as hard for them as possible, to the point that some companies will stop requiring root access.

But if you're too much of a sheep I have no sympathy.

Or, alternately, you could keep a separate OS install for games that require root. WoW supposedly will even run in Wine, so you might not even have to fork over for another Windows license. Your other drives/partitions, of course, would then be available to any program able to mount them, so doing this is pretty stupid unless you encrypt or physically remove them. Sound too complicated? Get a new hobby! It's their job as smart programmers to make anti-cheat software in a way that doesn't compromise your security.