Nice work if you can grift it: Two blokes accused of swindling $10m from the elderly with bogus virus infection alerts Two Americans used bogus virus-infection alerts to bilk $10m out of PC owners, it is alleged. Romana Leyva, 35, of Las Vegas, Nevada, and Ariful Haque, 33, of Bellerose, New York, were each charged this week with one count of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Each count carries a maximum of 20 years in the clink …
Put them up for compulsory organ donation (anyone remember Larry Nivens Gil Hamilton stories?)
Even the article author talks about "service that cost an arm and a leg".
Maybe some of the oldies that were ripped off could get something useful back..
I am very deliberately NOT using the joke icon.
One company in particular has had complaints of fake virus warnings that threaten to damage users phones every single day since 2013.
Here is an example from the Google Play store reviews from September 9th:
"I think buy (sic) telling people that they only have a few hours to download your app or the virus in your phone will stop it from working is a disgusting ploy. I'm curious what the FCC would think about it??"
Many of the fake virus warnings use Real Time Bidding through unscrupulous advertisers such as AppNexus or even generated from within preloaded system apps on low budget Android phones such as Alcatel.
The devlopers are affiliated with Avast and are mostly funded by Qihoo 360 after they were banned from the Play Store years ago for similar shananigans.
The app itself has thousands of user complaints of unauthorized billing and complaints of not being able to uninstall the app after it is granted Device Administrator by less tech savy users.
Six long years of this behaviour but of course the developer claims no knowledge.
Fortunately not only are my elderly parents' computers Pi-holed but also trained to know that if any such pop-up appears or random caller claiming that their PC is infected they can safely disregard/hang up the phone. I am always reminding them of these types of scams and constantly e-mail them articles such as this one to keep them vigilant.
they had a quite specific warning about malware in a Safari page, and to "click here to delete it" (actually d/l some crud)
but it was a double attack - either deliberately or accidentally, the first google hit with the specific virus text took me to a YouTube channel run by a Lithuanian IT 'doctor' whos ten minute 'clean your mac of this specific virus' suggested downloading a specific 'free' Mac virus scanner - which the community has noticed scans for hours, slowing the mac down (mining?) pops-up a warning that 24 files are infected - but won't reveal which ones, until you pay and claims that for just $80/year it will make things completely better again
more details available, should you need them, the YT page was just opened last sunday (but the video/malware/gouge-ware/"scanner" was much older)
at least there are (allegedly) less bank robberies
My mother in-law is in her 80's.
Last night she tells my wife that she had this happen and she actually was dumb enough to call the number. (Yes, I've repeatedly over the years have reminded her not to fall for this scam and to call me ASAP if she gets a bogus alert. )
[FD she's using my old Macbook Air circa 2011 - 2013 model. I forget when I actually bought it]
Just to be safe, primarily because she's not been that honest about what she does online... I told her to take the mac to Apple and have them help her wipe it and reset to factory install.
The sad thing... when these guys get out of prison, they'll go back to being a scam artist.
The explosion is for what I want to do to these types of A holes.
> I wonder who that might be.
Question is just what influence does this legitimate technology company have, that they manage to keep their name out of the indictment if not totally out of this technical article :]
“The scheme generally worked as follows. first, the Fraud Ring caused pop-up windows to appear on victems' computers. The pop-up windows claimed, falsly, that a virus has infected the victem's computer. The pop-up window directed the victem to call a particualr telephone number to obtain technical support.”
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1203461/download
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