Saturday, May 29, 2010

U.S. Indicts Cybercriminals in Scareware Scam Case

The United States have accused three men of running an operation that used fraudulent ads to dupe internet users in more than 60 countries into buying more than $100 million worth of rogue anti-virus software. This was done by showing false virus warnings or other fake warnings about critical system issues on the screen and convincing users to buy treatments for those.

The defendants took advantage of online ads that they were able to post on different internet publishers websites. The publishers were not aware of true nature of the ads that rode on well known company names. Some scam products sold were DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, Malware Alarm, Antivirus 2008 and VirusRemover 2008.

The press release can be read here.

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