US-Based Tech Support Firm Sells Unlicensed Malwarebytes Software

[allheart55 (Cindy E)]

Tech support scams are very profitable, as demonstrated by a recent operation, run from Florida, USA, that managed to sell at least $230,000 / €171,000 worth of unlicensed Malwarebytes software. The scammers would find various ways to drive users to call their fake tech support service and convince them to buy computer unlicensed security products, at a higher price than the original software.

This particular fraudulent operation caught the attention of Malwarebytes security researcher Jerome Segura, who started to gather information about the company perpetrating the scam and how it operated.

He discovered the firm was based in the US, and that, in order to avoid getting caught, they would not call their victims, but instead wait to be contacted by the users in distress, who would be alerted of virus infection through various methods.

Segura lists three such methods: ads in Google or Bing search results targeting certain popular keywords (i.e. FBI virus, Netflix support), free registry cleaners/optimizers generating a misleading number of errors and borderline fake/fraudulent pages designed to scare the user.

More details - http://news.softpedia.com/news/US-B...Unlicensed-Malwarebytes-Software-452542.shtml

 

[Rich-M]

I find it certainly ironic to hear this from Softpedia, one of the most infection bearing prevalent sites on the map.