Everyone knows what a rogue antivirus is and how they work. For those who don’t know I’ll describe briefly.
Rogue/Fake antivirus is software which is installed automatically on your computer. These fake antivirus programs pretend to be real antivirus programs detecting multiple spyware, malware & virus threats on your computer. But reality is that they are in the market to make free money while doing nothing. Thing is a normal computer user fells for this quite often and loses money.
I’m a regular Skype user and I got a request from someone named “Update Registry” with a message.
This person simply tried to convince me that my computer has been affected by a malware and asked me to visit a website (Linked mentioned below). Upon visiting the given link a “Scan window” appeared and showed me the number of spywares & viruses on my computer.
Now the funny part is that they don’t even know the correct spelling of “Average” and they wrote it “Avarage” instead. This isn’t surprising at all because most of such programs are created by non-English people.
Here is the complete message:
WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION
URGENT SYSTEM SCAN NOTIFICATION ! PLEASE READ CAREFULLY !!
updatecd.org/
For the link to become active, please click on ‘Add to contacts’ skype button or type it in manually into your web browser !
FULL DETAILS OF SCAN RESULT BELOW
****************************************
WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION
ATTENTION ! Security Center has detected malware on your computer !
Affected Software:
Microsoft Windows Vista
Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Impact of Vulnerability: Remote Code Execution / Virus Infection /
Unexpected shutdowns
Recommendation: Users running vulnerable version should install a repair utility immediately
Your system IS affected, download the patch from the address below !
Failure to do so may result in severe computer malfunction.
updatecd.org/
For the link to become active, please click on ‘Add to contacts’ skype button or type it in manually into your web browser!
If you happen to come across such a message, DO NOT open the website and even if you do so DO NOT download the application. It might be a spyware to steal your private information.
Below is the screen shot of how a scan (On clicking the link) will look like:
Note that this isn’t my computer but the said website. So avoid downloading anything as this might be harmful to either your computer or your confidential/private data.
Thank you for posting this. I’m a new Skype user and the message caught me off-guard. Glad I googled before clicking anything.
Good to know this article helped you. Hopefully you will keep on visiting the website for latest information and How Tos.
Thank you, this is very good info, as I had no idea that this type of thing can be done through Skype… until this morning when I got the same exact thing. You can also put a block on the person sending you this junk and report them all in one simple step: Right click on the person’s name (in this case “update registry”), then scroll down the window that opens and select “Block this person”. Then an additional window will open after that where you can select “report abuse on Skype”. Skype is great!
I know this is an old newsletter, but thank you for the warning. I use a Mac so I was kind of confused when it popped up, but I’ve got Microsoft Word on it, so it paid to make sure.
they are also doing this with the link http://www.updatevd.org
I’ve been using skype for years, and lately I get a lot of junk chats and solicitations, but this one looked so real! Thank you for the warning, Tasaddoq. We will visit this website often, so keep it coming…
Thanks! New Skype-user, with new Mac computer, and I thought it seemed odd, so I’m glad I google’d first!
Thank you for warning about skype’s Fake Antivirus message. Apparently, they identify every hard drive that downloads skype sending the tricky message, which appears legitimate with its “.org” extension.
Congratulations, and good luck on your endeavors. I’ll come back to visit.
What was funny is that it told me what Windows it was for and I’m on Windows 7 which wasn’t listed. That was my first clue.
thanks lot