What are fake antiviruses and how to stop them?

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Rogue Software is the name of a type of virus that makes you believe that your computer is infected by malware. It can appear on your screen suddenly or install itself when you are looking for protection software for your device. When you look to download an antivirus you are in grave danger of infection since many viruses hide behind antiviruses as it’s understood that the people who are looking to secure their computers usually have PCs that are more vulnerable.

Normally this fictitious antivirus will find one or many viruses on your PC and, in order to remove them you will be asked to pay a Premium charge. Currently mobile phones are the devices most often receiving these types of alerts about possible infections.

Rogue antivirus

These fictitious antiviruses will often eliminate malware that you might already have installed but they will also install others to steal your personal data, passwords etc… When you see that the antivirus has deleted a threat or vulnerability that you had on your PC, you think that the tool is a real antivirus and not a fake.

How can you detect these programs?. It is really difficult to identify whether the alert that appears on your mobile or PC is a real antivirus or Rogue software since they are being perfected on a daily basis and look more and more like the authentic ones.

Microsoft has created a test on their Facebook page to see if you are able to determine when an alert appears from a real antivirus and when it is from Rogue Software. We invite you to try it.

https://www.facebook.com/msftmmpc/app_236330836495399

We at Prot-On recommend that you check if it´s real or a fake:

Look for the name of the virus that appears, further down below you will find a list of names of fake antiviruses already detected

If you think it is a real anti-virus since it has a name like Panda, Kaspersky, McAfee or some other renowned antivirus check if the url takes you to the official site of the antivirus software or to a similar but fictitious site. If they ask you for bank details or personal data on entering the site you should leave, it’s probably a scam.

Here is a list of fake antiviruses already detected that you can consult whenever you want to:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rogue_security_software