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Computer Users' Fears of Viruses Helping Viruses to Spread

by Tim Stevens on April 10, 2009 at 01:35 PM

Computer Users' Fears of Viruses Helping Them to Spread

If stories with twisted logic make your head hurt, you might want to just scroll on down the page and read the next story. Or, go pop an aspirin, because this one's a bit of a doozy. According to Reuters' account of Microsoft's annual Security Intelligence Report, published on Wednesday, people's fears of being infected by viruses and other malicious software is actually helping those viruses to spread. Users are so intent on cleaning their computers, they'll install anything that they think will help -- even if what they're installing is, itself, a virus.

Microsoft says that publicity surrounding viruses and worms like Conficker has resulted in more people fearing them. This has led many users to go searching for programs that say they'll clean your computer -- when, in actuality, many of them contain malicious software and maybe even viruses. That's the case with Anti-Virus-1, a piece of "scareware" that tries to trick you into handing over your credit card number. In fact, of the 25 "top security threats" that the report mentions, seven of them are bogus security programs. What can you do? For starters, stick with virus scanners you can trust, like these. Secondly, ignore those "registry cleaner" programs and others that, at best, don't do a thing, and, at worst, could be packing some malicious payloads. [From: Reuters]

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Tags: conficker, malware, microsoft, scareware, security, security intelligence report, SecurityIntelligenceReport, virus

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