Fake Pop-Ups Posing a Great Online Threat to Surfers

According to a warning given by Tony Neate, Managing Director of Get Safe Online, fake pop-ups on computer screens are becoming more and more sophisticated and causing a much wider threat to online firms, as reported by zerostrategy on October 31, 2008.

Neate also said that it is getting increasingly difficult to measure the threat emerging from pop-ups that continue to evolve. As a result, clicking on phony pop-ups could install a spyware or other malicious software on users' systems.

These new pop-ups usually present themselves by informing the use that he is the "Millionth Visitor" or say something like "Congratulations You Have Won", but despite these pop-ups appear silly, people regularly clicking on them.

Also, these messages arrive as warnings and seem real, but the bogus ones usually claim to be "cleaning" software for removing spyware or viruses from the user's system. However, clicking on these so-called "scarewares" does not rectify any problem, but infect systems with additional malware.

Furthermore, pop-ups are rapidly becoming the most preferred technique of loading software on a remote PC, yet in spite of this and the range of software programs available today, users are still being duped via such fakes.

Moreover, it seems some computer users are finding the pop-ups so annoying that they enter "Ok" as an instinctive action to remove them, but in reality, they are actually permitting the cyber miscreants to install potentially harmful software, possibly spyware, onto their system. Alternatively, the badware converts the computer into a compromised "zombie" machine.

Security experts state that it is not difficult to dupe surfers online. Hence, they are advising users to be suspicious about pop-up messages and not click on "Ok", rather click on the 'cross' that would shut the box. They are also recommending online companies to deploy blockers for pop-ups so that risks from progressive online hazards could be minimized.

Meanwhile, a new survey of students by a research team at the North Carolina State University found that fake pop-ups had been able to fool 63% of respondents who could not distinguish them from real messages.

» SPAMfighter News - 15-11-2008

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