what is a scareware ? the scary boy in softwares

You must have heard about freewares , sharewares , malwares , firmwares etc.
But scareware is new kinda thing in queue of softwares.
As the name suggests , its scary software.
Scary software or scareware is probably meant to scare people about their computer security and maintenance hence exploiting them.

So lets see what can a scareware do to scare you?



What exactly is scareware?
Scareware is a software or program designed to trick people for doing unnecessary download or purchase , that may or may not be harmful to your pc.
Scarewares commonly uses technique of displaying false errors or warning messages about system having critical errors or virus infections. And thus makes users to download a removal for it
which is majorly another malware.


Pop ups ??

Whenever you see something like " CRITICAL ERROR FOUND " "REGISTRY CORRUPTED " or may be " 2098 ERRORS FOUND " or " VIRUS INFECTED " .
Then make your sense ready for something suspicious.
These scarewares will probably warn you about registry , viruses , security or similar problems.
Even when browsing websites flashing pop ups can deliver scarewares to your computer.



Height of scaring !!!?
Pop ups , balloon messages are ok upto a limit.
But some scarewares entirely change desktop.
They replaces icons on desktop and even icons on system tray.
Moreover they change the wallpaper to something like " WARNING ! SPYWARE INFECTED ".
That's not over yet...
These guys change the screen saver to something like crawling bugs around desktop.
WTF.

Some scarewares just scare you to play prank.
like " erase your hard drive ? "
With two buttons both having "ok".
Clicking on it does nothing but screws head.



But what about real errors and messages ???
Although scarewares scares a lot making hell with pop ups and messages, genuine messages do exists ( O' realy ).
Your antivirus can display certain unexpected messages.
Or even windows itself can display certain errors.
Its upto you , how you distinguish between originals and fake ones.
Better thing is to tickle your mind or make a neat internet search for the message.
You might find something over internet.


Prevention from scary boy...
The only prevention from scarewares is using good anti-virus and most importantly a good firewall.
Another clean solution is to keep an eye on strange things happening in your pc and distinguish wisely between original and fakes.
Because the main principle behind scarewares is social engineering, you need to be smart too.



Well that's ok for today about scareware.. For more checkout an article at Wikipedia about scarewares.