Scareware virus
Fake antivirus programs, which are often referred to as "scareware," is the third and arguably most irritating leg of the malware stool.With scareware, a warning pops up on your computer screen telling you that your computer is infected and attempts to sell you a program to disinfect the program. This is the ultimate no-win situation.
If you click anywhere on the warning, you get infected. If you ignore the warning, it will never go away. And if you fall for the ruse and buy the fake antivirus program, your computer will then become another warrior in the scammer's botnet army.
"This is the one thing in the world of malware that is visible," Perry said. "If you're infected, you'll know it because it's visible and bugs you all the time."
If you think you can simply hit Alt-Control-Delete — the keyboard combination that brings up the Task Manager in Windows — to rid shut down the offending program, think again. Many malware programmers expect panicked users to do this, and create fake Task Manager windows that trigger the infection.
So how big is the problem? Over 100,000 new Trojan downloaders are created every day, Perry said. Most computer users aren't knowledgeable enough to deal with the problems themselves without help, he added. "It's too vast and too pervasive."
The best defense, he said, is to install a suite of Internet security software and religiously update it.
"For right now, count your change and watch your Ps and Qs," he said. "There's no way to easily tell that something wrong is going on on the Internet."
If you’d like to learn more about the dos sand don’t of practicing safe computing, a good place to start is 13 Ways to Protect Your System, a list of security tips from McAfee’s Threat Center.
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