As a person who’s been online a long time and is pretty savvy about tech and virus issues, I watch my inbox for emails with attachments that I don’t recognize; sites that automatically re-direct me elsewhere and have my anti-virus software updated daily and do regular scans. I back up email and files to two external drives. I thought I was pretty smart and thankfully I take lots of notes when working with my tech guy and/or Microsoft technical support. (I have drawers full of “spent” steno pads with notes)
August 2009 was a busy time for me. While on a “tear” of creativity writing emails and posts, a generic screen popped up on my computer and said I had just downloaded a virus. I didn’t examine the “notification window” closely to realize it wasn’t the one associated with my own anti-virus software. The notification screen said I should do an immediate scan –which I did– but it was “their” scan and not my anti-virus program doing the scan. According to that “scan”, I had over 40 viruses, worms and trojan horses! I panicked despite that I had performed an anti-virus scan the week before and came out clean.
The scan window suggested I upgrade to Protective Anti-Virus software for $50 for one year or a three year upgrade for $79.00 to remove all these nasty critters. Whipping out the plastic, I decided to \purchase only a one-year upgrade, thinking that I was being smart in handling it so quickly . I downloaded the upgrade and upon rebooting the computer, I discovered that I had made a colossal error in judgement.
The computer came to desk-top but none of my Microsoft programs worked. Attempting to open any Microsoft program: Outlook, Internet Explorer, or MS Office and the window/program immediately shut down. I checked the Protective Anti-Virus software site (otherwise known as PAV) for tech support and sent them 4 emails and 4 voicemails over two days. I did get a voice-mail from someone from PAV but that message was to ask me to call back. I did– but heard nothing further.
My tech guy arrived to check out the computer and discovered that I had PAV. Upon googling “PAV”, we found several sites that indicated PAV was malware– a program bent on crippling a computer. One site alone had over 40,000 posts on how their computers were disabled by PAV and how to fix it. The PAV people had since improved their malware to point of requiring a complete wipe of the computer to clear out PAV. Not only had I downloaded something that had taken me off-line, but I paid them to do it with my credit card so I was the victim of credit card fraud. I called my bank to dispute the charge to PAV and also filed a fraud report. Three weeks — and over one thousand dollars in tech support and additional hardware– later, my computer was fully functional but I had lost various document, photo and audio-visual files in the restoration. Cyber-crime had struck with a vengence!
Fast-forward 4 weeks: I happened to be on Peter Shankman’s HARO site (Help a Reporter Out) and saw a post asking for cyber-crime victims. I sent in my very brief email and the email exchanges began. About twenty email exchanges later, I was on the phone with PR people who wanted to hear about my malware experience in exhaustive detail — a conversation full of questions.
Eventually I found out that their client– McAfee,– wanted to use me in a video about cyber-crime and how sophisticated it has become and how easily it is to be taken in by these scams or “scareware”
What’s the impact of this Fake Anti-Virus or Scareware?
- “Scareware,” or fake anti-virus software, could cause the most monetary damages to consumers and their computers in 2010.
- “One company, known as ‘Integrated Marketing’ made $180 million through these scams, and more than two million consumers contacted the company regarding its software.”
- According to McAfee, there has been a 400% increase in reported incidents in the last 12 months. It’s been the number one call-driver to McAfee’s Virus Removal Service team for the past six months, with more than 19,000 calls logged in January 2010 alone.
-One in five online consumers was a victim of cybercrime in the past two years. (Consumer Reports, 2009)
-Almost a half-million households had to replace PCs due to malware in the past six months (source: Consumer Reports, June 2009.)
I bet you are thinking this can’t and won’t happen to you (particularly if you are on a MAC). That’s a bet I wouldn’t want you to make because you would lose. During the time since this post went live in mid-March, 2010, I have heard from more than 25 personal friends and associates who had this happen to them. I told them all to be smart, back up everything possible to an external drive (I now have 4 of them) and then wipe the infected drive. One of my friends spent easily 2-3 weeks with her tech guy trying to clean up her Mac laptop before having to wipe it clean. The numbers of general public who have contacted me about this (and get the same advice) have surpassed a thousand partly because this particular problem/issue was featured on KCBS LA twice (http://bit.ly/aMj0Gz -see the right sidebar for the video!) and CBS4.com, McAfee’s website & blog, blogcritics.org and in print– the most recent is August 2010′s Readers Digest.
What’s the underlying reason these scams and scareware tactics are being spread across the web with such intensity? The almighty dollar. The sharks are from globally determined to hit every computer possible. The best defense is to be aware of the potential and have great anti-virus software as well as a high panic threshold (unlike my first response) because the cyber-criminals will keep coming at you. They hit me again within a week of my first blog going live on my blog; the difference being that I recognized it for what it was and dealt with it appropriately. They haven’t stopped since then and I have been hit about 4 more times since then. These cirminals are persistant and will change up their scareware presentation in a variety of ways (e.g., Facebook or Gmail password login scams).
There is more information on scareware within my original post along with the other posts that I have hyperlinked.
Regarding the marketing aspect of this and how McAfee’s implementation, they found an issue that’s genuinely costing consumers millions of dollars every year (more if you count the time and emotional stress involved). McAfee researched the information on the costs, time and where the sources of the cybercrime initiative and provided a logical solution and upgraded their software to prevent this from happening to their customers. Plus they got someone credible who actually experienced it. I have to give them props for spreading this news across the web and they found other spins off this scareware and keep people informed on their CTA blog as well as facebook page and twitter. They entered the market ahead of the other anti-virus software with a big splash on this. (3 hours of video-taping in my home plus months of editing is pretty costly.) While other software brands have the same prevention capacity available, they aren’t spreading the gospel of awareness and prevention like McAfee is. That’s making a huge statement about McAfee’s consumer outreach.
Disclosure: I was not paid for my time, participation or video appearance by any party. For me, it is matter of personal security that I want everyone to have. Learn from the mistakes I made so you don’t have to learn the way I did: the hard, expensive, way..
Stevie Wilson, LA-Story.com
Stevie Wilson writes the www.LA-Story.com blog and is Chief Marketing Officer & Partner, KBP Inc, a privately held corporation dealing in new media/social media marketing strategy; internet start-ups and multi-media projects and promotions.
