Have you seen a message that looks a lot like the title of this article as you surf around the Internet? If you have, I hope you did not fall for it, and if you have not, be on the lookout for messages similar to that one and don’t fall for it!
Firstly, these kind of messages are simply advertisements that are designed to look like an error or warning message and to fool you into thinking something is wrong with your computer. The reality of it is that it’s just like any other advertising banner you would normally see on Internet web sites.
Secondly, understand that it is unlikely that your computer will be scanned for spyware just by visiting a web site. There are legitimate anti-virus and anti-spyware companies that offer free scanning services via their web sites, however these messages that simply pop up as you surf the web to warn you about spyware are not the result of anyone trying to do you a favor.
If you happen to click on the advertisement as it encourages you to do, you will likely be taken to a web site that offers you a program that promises to clean up all the nasty spyware or viruses on your computer.
There are a few well-known approaches. One is to allow you to download a free scanner program for you to run on your computer. If you do download and run the scanner program, it is likely to inform you that all kinds of evil spyware or other harmful programs are lurking on your computer and are preparing to crash your hard drive, erase your data, eat all the food in your fridge and poison your dog.
As you might suspect, all the urgent warnings provided by way of the scanner program are a load of hogwash. Some of these programs even list legitimate components of your system’s operating system as spyware! The casual user will have no idea that the strange-sounding programs listed by the scanner program are actually programs provided by Microsoft as part of the standard complement of programs and are not at all harmful.
After the free scanner program has informed you regarding all the ‘threats’ that are lurking on your computer, the next thing it will likely tell you is that the free scanner program is not able to correct these problems for you.
However, if you want to download the program you will need to clean all that nasty stuff of your system, you’ll have to download the other program that is capable of taking care of it for you. This, as you might expect, will be a program you will have to pay for.
There are, of course, variations on this scam. A far nastier one is the advertisement that leads you to a web page that actually attempts to infect your computer with a boatload of genuine spyware or other harmful programs. And at that point, you really do require the services of a spyware or virus removal program, which will, of course, be offered by the low-life scum that created the web page and infected your computer with harmful programs in the first place.
This nastier variation will usually depend on your computer being vulnerable due to a software ‘bug’ that allows things to happen to your computer that are not supposed to happen on your computer. In most cases, this vulnerability is simply due to an error on the part of the people who wrote the software that runs your computer ‘ usually Microsoft.
If you don’t pay attention to the news that makes these kinds of vulnerabilities known to the world, or don’t run ‘Windows Update’ on a regular basis, your computer is quite likely to be open to certain kinds of attacks that are used by people for malicious activities and believe me, new computer vulnerabilities are being discovered all the time, and there are those out there who pretty much make a career out of finding and exploiting them.
There are legitimate companies that create excellent anti-spyware and anti-virus programs and I highly suggest you consider checking them out. I actually make use of programs like this that are free of charge and do a fine job of helping me protect my computer. See the links below for more information.
The inspiration for this article comes from reading Mark Russinovich’s blog which can be found at sysinternals.com. His skill with computers is exceptional, as is his blog. However, it can get quite technical at times and might be a difficult read for someone who is just a casual computer user. That’s why I like to comment on some of his findings here and use a more low-tech approach in an effort to make some of his excellent information more palatable for people who are not so technically inclined.
Free anti-spyware and anti-virus links:
When this article was written all the above links lead to pages that offered free programs (you might have to dig around a bit to find them) that you can download and use totally free of charge. This can change as companies decide to discontinue various offers at any time.
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