If It Prints, I'll Let You Know

Being on the internet can be more than a little dangerous for your computer these days. Even more trusted and far less targeted websites like Twitter, Google and The New York Times are facing problems with hackers on their websites. Prompting the Better Business Bureau to post warnings about how to avoid the damages of scareware.

What is scareware? You’ve probably seen an example of this at least once while surfing the internet: a warning popup flashes on your screen prompting you to do a virus scan to protect your computer from a new threat before it spreads! The trouble is that there is no threat and this prompt is one of many pop-ups on the internet that focus on grabbing your attention and tricking you into downloading harmful files or filling out what you think is product information but is really an information list used to get your personal information for the purpose of identity theft.  This is scareware and for those who fall for it, it can be devastating, and the websites it occurs on often face loss of views and customers due to consumers who feel threatened by the website.

Major websites are often tricked into allowing an ad to be placed on the website and the hackers use this crack in the gate to setup shop. It’s only a matter of time before the hackers have several users information and are ready to abandon the scareware that got them so much information for identity theft.

Be safe and never going on the internet without a valid and up to date firewall and antivirus program installed. If you receive a scareware pop up window force the window to close through your task manager. In order to do this, hold down control, alt and delete at the same time. Then open your task manager, find the browser in the list of running programs and click the end task option.  Run an antivirus scan with legitimate, trusted software immediately to verify the scareware didn’t infect your computer while it was up.

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