The bad guys are especially savvy at giving you what you expect.  If you’re expecting a rebate check, you may receive an email about claiming your check.  Or if you’re a PayPal user, you may receive an email about your PayPal account and the need to ‘update your records by clicking here.’

In both cases, the emails contained payloads which – if you clicked on the links – quietly installed viruses on your computer.

The latest scam uses the same kind of social engineering tactics.  Instead of an email, the cybercriminals will send you a fairly official looking pop-up which says,

“WARNING! Viruses detected on your computer.  Click OK to remove.”

If you click OK, you risk getting infected, let alone being conned into buy software which doesn’t work.

If you see one of those messages and you’re not sure if it’s legitimate, you should NOT click on anything on that pop-up, including the ‘X’ in the top, right-hand corner.

Everything from the ‘Yes’ to the ‘No’ to the ‘X’ in the top right corner may contain  a payload of malicious software.  Your computer risks infection just by clicking on anything in that warning message.

Instead, do this:  Alt + F4.

In other words, to close the window, hold down the Alt key and hit F4.

So how bad is rogue security software?  Fake antispyware and antivirus programs have been around for a few years now, but we’ve noticed more computers coming in with this problem.  We are now so conditioned to keep our computers clean, we respond almost automatically to any urgent requests to remove viruses.  The bad guys know this, hence the ‘scareware.’

For a growing list of fake programs masquerading as the real thing, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_software

Be careful of wolves in sheep’s clothing.