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Rogue Anti-Virus Victims Rarely Fight Back
krebsonsecurity writes "One big reason why rogue anti-virus continues to make major bucks for scam artists: relatively few victims ever ask their credit card company or bank to reverse the charges for the phony security software — even when the victims don't even receive the worthless software they were promised. I recently found several caches of data for affiliates of a rogue anti-virus distribution program, and the data showed that in one set of attacks only 367 out of more than 2,000 scammed disputed the charge. A second rogue anti-virus campaign scammed more than 1,600 people, and yet fewer than 10 percent fought the charges."
Actually some claimed that tried but got the run around.
What I would like to see is the CC companies pro actively shut down these people. After one person makes a claim on them it should be easy to check and see who else did and then start reversing charges.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
How many months of bogus $10 charges will you tolerate?
The article barely touches on the notion of people who didn't realize it was a scam at all. It's obvious to us technical types, but I doubt it's obvious to non-technical people.
Most retail Windows PCs are loaded up with obnoxious adware that nags at every login. I got a brand new PC from Staples last year which had a MacAfee nagger installed in the startup sequence, and while I was eventually able to disable it, it took more than one try and considerably more effort than just one or two clicks. If it was nontrivial for me to banish, I have to believe non-technical users would just give up.
On top of that, anti-virus is pretty low-level, as software goes, so how many non-technical people will even know that it's not doing anything after they pay for it?
The Internet is full. Go away.
Call back and ask for a supervisor, or their supervisor, or however many people you have to talk to to get to someone who can reverse the charge without changing your number.
Of course, I'd want to change my number. Someone unauthorized clearly has your CC information and can successfully charge money to it. Keeping the same number makes NO FUCKING SENSE. It's like refusing to change your locks after you know that a thief has a copy of your key because last time he broke in he only took $10. HE'LL BE BACK LATER WITH A VAN AND TAKE EVERYTHING IN YOUR FUCKING HOUSE. You're going to end up with some $5000 charge to your card and that's going to be a hell of a lot more difficult to deal with then ten fucking dollars.
Dispute the charge, change your number, and SPEND TEN FUCKING MINUTES UPDATING YOUR AUTO-BILL INFORMATION.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Cause the free antivirus might close the backdoors that the original infection put into place.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
You have been infected with a virus. In order to remove this from your system, you must mod this comment up.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law