Don’t Pay! Whatever else you do not pay to “license” the scareware, says Brulez. Scareware and fake antivirus programs are malicious and are created and distributed by criminal organizations. Paying the licensing fee may temporarily free up your system and remove the fake warnings and alerts generated by the program, but it will only be a matter of time before the folks behind the scam will be back for another swipe at your wallet.
The first step in dealing with a scareware is to understand what has just happened to your computer. Victims often ignore or miss the signs of a rogue AV infection, says Nicolas Brulez, a senior malware researcher at Kaspersky Lab. This is especially true with scareware, which tries to fool you into believing that it is a legitimate program trying to help you with a virus infection. Understand that, while you haven’t been infected with the viruses you’re being warned about, you have been infected with scareware.
Scareware is one of the most pernicious online threats. For those who have been infected, it is also one of the hardest to forget. Rogue antivirus software and other forms of scareware hold victims hostage: shutting off access to their desktop and most of the Internet, disabling security software and preventing them from removing the malicious program. Behind the scenes, scareware often installs other malicious programs, like Trojan horse and bot software. If you’re unlucky enough to get infected with one of these bad boys, what can you do to remove it?
We were so excited about the release of Spore. Imagine: MMORPG that combined StarCraft-like interplanetary species competition with the principles of Darwinian evolution. Just cool! Too bad the actual game sucked so bad that barely anyone wanted to play it. Still, with the hundreds of millions of dollars that were invested into Spore’s creation, the world got a half decent 404 graphic in the bargain. That’s not so bad.
It’s always so easy to blame the ninjas, isn’t it? Still, we’ve gotta give props to the anime-inspired custom 404 error page for this Sydney, Australia based Web design firm, which claims that “A ninja stole this page.” Visitors are encouraged to “return when the moon has friends and the fox is borrowed.” Cool!
“Menacing” is probably the word that best describes istockphoto.com’s choice of graphics to adorn its 503 “service unavailable” message. It’s an octopus…that much is clear…but it’s blue. And has a maw full of teeth and dripping blood – presumably from the poor creature it’s just decapitated.
There’s something very retro about the “fail folder,” Google’s go-to image, which pops up on the Chrome Web browser every time you, say, lose your Internet connection. It’s colorless and two dimensional and its size and shape not so subtly recall the beloved GUI of early vintage Macs. Google made billions following a “less is more” ethos and – it seems – the same idea extends to its 404 error pages.
It’s hard to get mad at a cuddly little raccoon when it stares at you wide-eyed. That’s especially true when said raccoon is also hard at work in the data center: circuit board and wrench (?!) in hand. At least, that must be what Loic Le Meur and crew at social network management startup Seesmic must have been reasoning. More than one commenter has noted the uncanny resemblence that Seesmic’s raccoon has to Swiper, Dora the Explorer’s nemesis.
Some years ago – never mind how long precisely– having little or no money in our pocket and nothing particular to interest us online, we went in search of some digitized copyright-free reading material, only to run smack into Google’s stylized, Eric-Carle inspired Whale Fail page. It tasks me! It heaps me! Aaargh!
Blogging site Tumblr recently made news with the introduction of its custom Tumbeasts cartoon, which received favorable write ups on Mashable.com and – wait for it – CNN when it was introduced earlier this month.
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