Phony anti-virus programs go berserk, Google reported

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» 28 April 2010

Phony anti-virus programs go berserk, Google reported

There is an evident increase in the number of phony anti-virus programs running wild within the web community. According to the Google examiners, the online users fall into the wicked traps and they end up buying the anti-virus scanner that are deemed to have no function at all.

Escalation in the quantity of fraudsters is apparent

As of today, there is an approximately 15 percent of worthless anti-virus devices among the total malwares in the web. In addition, 50 percent of these malwares are, in fact, distributed through false advertisements. Based on the given figurers, there is a climb in the number of anti-virus scanners of about five times in just one year.

Written by the Google team on their paper, The Nocebo Effect on the Web, was the fact that the phony anti-virus scanners are dispensed in the web even though there is no single threat within the computer system of an online user.

Cheaters use the most creative ways

On top of that, the attackers behind the scheme of distributing the fake anti-virus program increase their visibility online through various advertisements. These advertisements are then created in a way that it can direct the users to the websites where they can avail for the phony anti-virus software. The vicious distributors channel the online traffic by manipulating the search engines so that the websites containing the fake anti-virus programs will appear in the high ranks by making it appear as commonly searched keywords.

Figures surely never lie

Compared to the figures that were recorded in the year 2009, the research team concluded that there was an actual increase in the fake anti-virus programs today. It was noted from the old reports that there was only about three percent affected websites last year. However, this surged up to 15 percent this present year.

During the first month of 2009, there were only 93 sites that were discovered to have been distributing the phony anti-virus application. But then, by the end of the same year, the number enlarged from 93 to 587 websites.

The Google research team included in their paper the difficulties of the security firms considering the detection of the fake anti-virus codes. In order to help in this increasing problem, Google created a program that can assist in the faster identification of the fake codes.

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