What is Scareware?

I'm sure all of you have heard about 'Malware'...But what about 'Scareware'? Heard about it anywhere?  okay since I'm rhyming, now you might be wondering whether i'm into poetry or something. :D

Even though if you might haven't heard the word, i'm pretty sure you would have been affected by it( assuming that you are a normal Internet user).

Scareware, as its name suggests, is some program used to scare people. It pop-ups some frightening messages telling the user that their system has been affected with some viruses or some other sort of vulnerability. It urges the user to download that specific program into their system, and to scan their system with this program. Many users fall into this trap. They download these software, and some times even pay for them( not in Sri Lanka though; we never pay for digital stuff :D ).

First thing to understand is that the message is fake.You don't have the viruses or vulnerabilities which the program says that you do, but worth to note that you already have some sort of virus now; it is the scareware program itself.

If you were a victim in the future, make sure not to pay. The procedure they use to trap many of the users is, they would allow you to download the software for free, but to remove the viruses which the program says you have ( we know its fake ), you will be asked to pay. Once you give the credit card information it might steal the data and affect you in a very bad way, or else they might deceive you by saying that the viruses have been deleted, but after a month or sometime they might try the same trick on you once again.

If your system is protected with a full version of a well recognized antivirus or Internet security program, you will be safe from these scareware most of the time. If you ever try to install an antivirus program after you have been affected with the scareware, most of the time, it wouldn't even allow to open up the antivirus program. Then you have no luck than trying an online tutorial to remove the scareware or to format your computer and install your operating system back again.

I have come through lots of scareware programs in the past, but I never knew that they were false alarms. I'm sure you would have seen these kinds of fake programs which scared you. I'm sharing a video below, which describes how a scareware would look like.

Thank you for reading through. I hope now you have a fair knowledge to avoid scareware, and to save your system from them.

Watch the video here