Cyber-Vampire-Scammers

I’ll be the first to admit that I have seen all the movies of the Twilight saga thus far and have liked every single one (but that didn’t stop my bosses from making fun of me). With Vampires on the mind, you might be susceptible to viruses or identity theft. Not because they are going to come and bite you and turn you into a vampire, but because there is a new scam targeting Twilight search results on Google.

The cyberscammers will create a fake webpage on Eclipse (or whatever other trendy subject they prefer) that will show up in the top Google results for your search query. After you click on the site, a fake warning will pop up saying you’re in danger of being infected by some virus. Then you will be convinced to buy some obscure anti-virus software from the warning window. After you’ve bought it, you will not have any anti-virus software, and the bad guys will have all your money.

Byron Acohido of USA Today writes,

“If you see a suspicious scareware alert, the worst thing you can do is click on anything in the alert, even a ‘cancel’ button. That’s because clicking on anything the bad guys present to you usually advances the scam. Instead, do a force quit: type ‘cntl-alt-delete’ to navigate to your task manager. Locate the application running the fake alert and force-quit it by clicking ‘end task.’”

Also, be sure to keep your virus protection software up-to-date. It may be inconvenient today, but you’ll be less inconvenienced tomorrow when you don’t have any viruses to clean.