XP Antivirus is a fake antivirus program. It looks like an anti virus program and when run it tells you it found a number of threats. It then prompts you to spend money in order to remove the alleged threats. The threats it tells you about aren’t real, it’s a scam to get money from you.
The road to XP Antivirus is:
- A malicious ad appears on legitimate web sites. The operators of the web sites hosting this ad aren’t aware of what it is.
- A message appears offering a product called XP Antivirus. The message reads:
- Attention! If your computer is infected, you could suffer data loss, erratic PC behaviour. PC freezes and creahes.
Detect and remove viruses before they damage your computer!
XP antivirus will perform a quick and 100% FREE scan of your computer for Viruses, Spyware and Adware.Do you want to install XP antivirus to scan your computer for malware now? (Recommended)
(Note: I bolded the typo that appears in the original ad)
- If you say ok then a fake anti virus program is installed.
- The program then informs you about a large number of (untrue) malware on your computer
- You’re then asked to pay to remove them
A few days ago I mentioned a similar scam for Macs called iMunizator. These things will never let up so take care who you trust. Don’t just run or install unknown programs on your computer.
Viruses used to be the main problem related to the internet. While the majority of viruses are not terribly destructive, they can be both annoying and somewhat troubling to most computer users.
Yeah I agree, viruses don’t cause the same problems as they did years ago. The main threats these days are people stealing bank and credit card details.