Fighting malware and spam

Rogue anti-malware

Fake security product demanding money to clean 'infections'

Rogue anti-malware products are fakes which resemble real security products, often with highly advanced product and website design. In many cases rogue products are installed via a 'free offer' or as part of a bundle of other such products, but they may also be installed via unwanted and even stealthy download processes. Once installed, the product appears to scan the local system and then reports a number of threats (which do not, in fact, exist on the system). The product then insists on payment for a fully-licensed version in order to clean the supposed threats from the system.

Such scams have become commonplace, operating under a number of names generally with some vaguely security-related theme, and have even targeted users of Apple Mac systems.

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