Rogue Anti-Malware Applications

When we use the term, “malware”, we mean any malicious software, including adware, spyware, viruses, worms. Have you have ever seen a pop-up out of the blue telling you, “Your Computer is Infected” and showing a list of malicious programs, which are supposedly on your system? In all likely hood, this is a scam. The pop-up window will also lead you to download a program to correct the problem, which is, in fact a malicious infection itself. It is a Rogue Anti-Malware program. It may even try to sell itself to you via a credit card payment, which you should obviously avoid.

The above case is obvious, but how do you know what to do in a more subtle situation? How do you tell if an anti-virus program is genuine?

An easy way to investigate is to google the name. If the program is spyware, there will probably be a number of results in Google complaining about it or explaining how to remove the program. If genuine, there will be some definite signs in the results, like reviews of the actual application. There will probably also be sponsored links appearing because it is a genuine product that other websites are promoting and selling. Never simply give away credit card details online to every cartoon elephant that asks you for them. Unless you are buying a well known product from a main site, such as Norton or McAfee, pay close attention to the payment system. Big companies are bound to have their own and we hope they can be trusted. However, less well known products will usually be sold through a third party system. This is a good thing because it adds extra security, for example, Paypal payments can be disputed. Many products are sold through Clickbank, which is always a good sign. It means your money is actually going into a Clickbank account, which only pays the vendor periodically and has very strict refund policies. If there is ever a problem in future, you can contact Clickbank directly with the transaction code and claim back the payment.

Examples of Rogue Anti-Malware Applications are CoreGuard AntiVirus 2009, Malware Catcher 2009 and Fast Antivirus 2009. These examples are pretty slick and imitate the real thing very well. Make sure you have not already fallen victim to such programs. If so, use a genuine removal application to get rid of them. Consider whether you have ever entered credit card details and check transactions on the associated card.