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Scammers Deliver FAKEAV Through Call Centers

Cyber-criminals aren't any longer confining their tactics merely to the Net. They're operating offline too through the telephone for executing their scams. End-users download malware or give away credit card details believing they're really solving a security issue. This is the observation that security researchers made that EWeek published on December 24, 2010.

Reportedly, an extremely new virus is circulating while it attacks users' PCs in a fully disguised form as though it's most harmless. Security researchers state that during the anti-virus (AV) scam, users are getting phone-calls from call centers wherein the callers assert they're Microsoft's support staff, who just wanted to ensure if the users' computers were okay, tells senior technology consultant Graham Cluley at Sophos. EWeek published this. There are other variations too to the scam wherein the caller poses as a "security advisor" or someone from the Internet Service Provider the user has subscribed.

Specifically, within the scam in discussion, fraudsters are e-mailing fake anti-virus programs to computer users worldwide that destruct the latter's systems and defraud them off large sums of money.

Says Cluley that the callers i.e. the fraudsters use a script, which reveals end-users' look within the "techy" zones in the registry, Event Viewer, or Control Panel with several frightening errors, cryptic warnings and messages. When the end-user views certain messages, alternatively browses through the screen's content, he is explained that they're problems while the fraudster pounces with his trap.

State the security researchers that fake anti-virus software resist programs that clean Trojan or other malware as they're themselves malicious programs. The sole purpose for which they exist is fraud and theft by seizing the credit card details of end-users via deceptive acts. Consequently, fake AVs work as scams associated with identity theft and fraud.

Comments principal virus researcher Fraser Howard for Sophos Labs through a blog, as security products improve, they cause increasing trouble for Web-based scams and assaults in gaining success; however, there's little obstruction to telephone calls via these products and so the callers directly hook the chain's most fragile connection, the computer operator. EWeek published this on December 23, 2010.

Related article: Scammers Exploit Tax System Resulting in ID Theft

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