The US government has moved to shut down sellers of fake security software. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has won a restraining order that stops several sellers of "scareware" from continuing to trade.| They had to go to court for that? |
FROZEN FUNDS
Court papers submitted by the FTC show that the peddlers of the fake security software tricked websites into advertising their products. The companies behind the fake security software won customers via adverts on many popular websites. Anyone clicking on an advert was taken to the webpages run by the fake security firms which then ran a "scan" looking for security problems. Every scan found a host of security problems and urged visitors to buy software to fix them. Typically the scans found evidence of viruses, spyware and, in some cases, illegal pornography.