Massive Earthquake in Chile Leads to a Surge of Rogue Antivirus
Published February 28, 2010 | 
Is seems like when there is a natural disaster or other big news worthy story like Michael Jackson’s death, the scammers come out of the woodwork.
With all of the devastation caused by the earthquake in Chile and the earthquake not long ago in Hati, the need for help is huge.
Turns out, the scammers have a need, too. The need to fool you into infecting your computer with their rogue virus protection software that can take over your computer.
As it turns out there are a number of websites that have been poisoned that are easily found by doing a search of the phrase “Chile Earthquake”.
The infection, as many of them do, looks likes this:
Quote from Symantec:
“Notice that this fake scan window was actually presented inside a Firefox browser window but the fake scan window says I’m using IE 7.0, I guess the people behind this particular scam slipped up a bit on this minor point.
After the fake scan is complete or if you try to navigate away from the page, you are offered the obligatory download of files with various filename such as packupdatebuild[RANDOM NUMBER]_[RANDOM NUMBER].exe or inst.exe. These are being detected by Symantec as Trojan.FakeAV or VirusDoctor“.
If you search for places on the web to make a donation to help with these natural disasters, make sure you type the address to a site you trust, like the American Red Cross. If you are going to click on a link, make sure that your recognize the name of the site’s address, usually in green under the listing on Google for instance.
Make sure you are donating to trusted sites. It’s to easy to get fooled into giving money, your credit information, and your computer to the bad guys.
Avast Doesn't Talk To Me Any More
Published March 8, 2009 | Tom asked:
“when I had the free Avast service I would get a voice telling me that quote avast antivirus is updated”. But now that I have purchased version of Avast I no longer get that message. Should I run the disk that was sent to me when I made the purchase”?
Hello Tom,
The setting for this should be the same in the purchased version as it is in the free version. Follow these steps:
1. Right click on the little blue ball in the system tray down near the clock.
2. Click on program settings in the menu that pops up.
3. On the left side of the window, click on Sounds.
4. Make sure that the checkbox next to “disable Avast sounds” is unchecked.
5. Now click the okay button.
That should turn the sound back on for you and let you know when updates have been installed.
I hope that helps,
Mike
