Hey, who doesn't trust a dolphin? Well, if Flipper tells you that your Android phone is infected and he can clean it up for the low, low price of $50, he's blowing bubbles up your tail pipe:
None of the legitimate antivirus vendors do this. None. So anyone who does this can't be legit, right? Even if they're a dolphin.
Fake antivirus software, or "scareware" scams have been one of the tried and true methods that crooks have used to make illegal profits online in recent years. The scams often offer convincing replicas of legitimate anti malware software to trick users into installing malicious programs that can steal sensitive information or encrypt hard drives and extort money from the owner to decrypt the data.
Windows systems have been the target of choice for scareware scams. But now, with the explosion of mobile device use, Kaspersky Lab researcher Denis Maslennikov says that online scam artists have begun targeting users of Android mobile devices with similar offers of phony virus scans and bogus antivirus software. Writing on the Securelist blog, Maslennikov says that Web searches for popular mobile applications, such as the mobile version of the opera Web browser, have turned up scam Web sites offering "free" virus scans of mobile devices, including Android.
3 comments:
What's that Flipper? Sandy's fallen into an underwater well?!
Dolphins make great dog-food!!
Yum, that's good dolphin!
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