outrageous scam site!!!
Sunday, 9 August 2009 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eToday I accidentally happened across this scam site that seems to intercept google searches somehow (I was trying to find out what would dissolve a particular epoxy resin called Araldite here in Australia). Google came up with a lot of results, including this fake site called
onlinesecurescannerv3.com
At first it came up with an annoying pop-up telling me that my computer is infected and would I like to do an online scan. I cancelled, but it pretended to do a scan anyway and came up with the utterly amazing screen which I've put behind this lj-cut tag:
How astonishing is the level of work that has gone into that! I had no idea the scammers had gotten so sophisticated now. The window looks just like a standard Microsoft Windows file view. The red warnings of numbers of trojans in "Shared Documents" and the two hard drives blink to attract attention, the green fake scanning line grew to the right, and the blue window could be moved around just like a real window. Just one problem... I'm using Linux and my system looks nothing like this. Even when I used to use MSWindows I always used a different color scheme from the standard.
When I dragged the fake "Windows Security Alert" window to the side the site tried to send me an installable file. If I'd been using Microsoft InternetExplorer on Microsoft Windows this might not have even notified me (I'm not sure if they fixed that security hole yet) before installing it. Even if I saved the file to my machine on Linux I doubt it would have run. I don't use Wine because of just such risks (Wine lets Linux fool programs into thinking they are in a MSWindows machine thus allowing them to run).
Once installed on the machine I shudder to think what such a program could do. Horrifying.
I wonder how many people are sucked in by such assholes. I hope the cops come down on these scum-sucking bastards. Warn as many people as possible of the dangers of such sites. The only real safety here is knowledge.
onlinesecurescannerv3.com
At first it came up with an annoying pop-up telling me that my computer is infected and would I like to do an online scan. I cancelled, but it pretended to do a scan anyway and came up with the utterly amazing screen which I've put behind this lj-cut tag:
How astonishing is the level of work that has gone into that! I had no idea the scammers had gotten so sophisticated now. The window looks just like a standard Microsoft Windows file view. The red warnings of numbers of trojans in "Shared Documents" and the two hard drives blink to attract attention, the green fake scanning line grew to the right, and the blue window could be moved around just like a real window. Just one problem... I'm using Linux and my system looks nothing like this. Even when I used to use MSWindows I always used a different color scheme from the standard.
When I dragged the fake "Windows Security Alert" window to the side the site tried to send me an installable file. If I'd been using Microsoft InternetExplorer on Microsoft Windows this might not have even notified me (I'm not sure if they fixed that security hole yet) before installing it. Even if I saved the file to my machine on Linux I doubt it would have run. I don't use Wine because of just such risks (Wine lets Linux fool programs into thinking they are in a MSWindows machine thus allowing them to run).
Once installed on the machine I shudder to think what such a program could do. Horrifying.
I wonder how many people are sucked in by such assholes. I hope the cops come down on these scum-sucking bastards. Warn as many people as possible of the dangers of such sites. The only real safety here is knowledge.
Re: fake scanner
Date: 2009-08-12 06:03 pm (UTC)Re: fake scanner
Date: 2009-08-12 08:44 pm (UTC)One of the things I love about Live Journal is the number of really helpful and good people here, both individually and in its communities. That is pretty-much true of most places on the net though. Most forums are helpful places, full of great people. You will always meet a small number of rotten people, but I find the internet is made up of mostly good folk.
This means really good things for the future.
Incidentally, to check out an example of some of the cool people and communities on LiveJournal, see my latest friends' postings.
http://miriam-e.livejournal.com/friends/
Some are individuals and some are communities. Each member can make their own list of friends. LiveJournal is waaayyy better than MySpace -- quicker to load, easier to use, and you have a choice of whether advertisements show on your pages. LiveJournal is free unless you decide to pay for it. I am a free member, though whenever I have income I pay for membership, by my own choice. I like to support such a cool environment.