Slashdot Mirror
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."
We see a lot of customers coming in with fake antivirus installed on their machines, and the customers sincerely believed they were purchasing a valid piece of software. I think the largest problem when I see people encountering this scenario, is that typically:
1.) They don't realize they've actually been scammed. Pop ups start appearing on their computer, and they receive an offer to purchase "antivirus" and fix the problem. They now think they're protected, but continue to have problems.
2.) They tried calling Visa/MC/Discover and couldn't convey why they were charged for a bogus product. Some of the "EULA" agreements that come with these fake antivirus products actually state in the fine print that the software product does nothing. People click "OK" on anything, and legally agreed to pay for a piece of software that doesn't do anything.
3.) Don't know how / Don't care. Whatever. Take the computer into a shop and have someone fix it, hopefully $60 of fake antivirus is enough to jog my memory into being a little more careful on the internet.
I've even see plenty of customers willingly disabling antivirus / firewall products because they are "inconvenient" when trying to do other things on the computer. Fake antivirus and antimalware really is quite a genius scam, but it doesn't surprise me that a lot of people lose to it, and rarely ask for their money back. Some of these people don't even know what malware IS.