Hacker Mind Tricks Increasing Malware Downloads

[JasonKaotic]

Not even my mum fell for the "YOUR COMPUTER HAS A VIRUS" trick, and she's a complete idiot with computers. She didn't even know you can hold shift to get capital letters/symbols until I told her earlier. How anyone could fall for those tricks is beyond me. Especially when they start saying "____.TXT IS A VIRUS! DON'T OPEN IT! BUY THE FULL VERSION OF THIS AND YOU CAN GET RID OF IT!" when you try and open documents you made.
(My brother is one of these people who fall for those tricks. I've had at least ten of those viruses. Goddammit.)
Luckily the people who make these viruses are crap at it too, I got rid of the virus without even using my antivirus. I was quote proud of myself for that.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Maybe it's wrong, but I actually admire the amount of work and polish that goes into some of these viruses.

I had one like this that looked IDENTICAL to the Windows Defender alert. When clicked on, (Even the X in the corner) it asks you to register your copy of Defender. Even if you get out of that, as soon as you open a browser, it says "Do not go online until you are protected" and pops up the screen again.

Not saying I approve, but the skill that went into that is rather amazing.

 

[The Random One]

The rule of thumb is to never trust anything on the internet ever, especially when it involves clicking "Yes."

Or "No." Or "Close this Window." Or the little X on the top right.

Or the most dangerous of all, "I Agree."

 

[internetzealot1]

When that shit pops up, I go full panic. Taskbar, close the window, turn the PC off, then spin it around three times while chanting.

 

[SnowyGamester]

Oh...My...Goodness. I knew some people were dumb, but 1 in 14 downloads? Am I the only person whos never clicked on any of that dumb shit? I get my viruses the old fashioned way...by surfing in IE without a proper security suite.

 

[BabyRaptor]

I constantly have to fix my aunts computer because she will click on anything without knowing what it does. When I try to explain it to her, even in caveman terms, she just outright refuses to learn and just blames her slowdown / popups, etc on me "fixing" her pc.

She absolutely refuses to use Firefox or Chrome because they are "too confusing" to her despite they don't look much different from many other browsers out there.

My roommate's father was like that. We eventually stopped going over there every other day to fix the computer. He learned quick enough after that.

 

[Angel Molina]

The rule of thumb is to never trust anything on the internet ever, especially when it involves clicking "Yes."

Amen

Yeah, I use Norton and several other types of scanners/anti-virus programs so I'm not so worried... But then again its only a matter of time until some other hacker comes up with a new program or some other pic..

Also, I use Noscript with Firefox so that I don't get any pop-ups or advertisement unless I specifically allow it, it helps a lot! ^_^

 

[Kimarous]

The rule of thumb is to never trust anything on the internet ever, especially when it involves clicking "Yes."

It's not as easy as clicking "No".

Click "Yes": Your infected.
Click "No": Your infected.
Click "Yes": Your infected.
Click "Cancel": You're infected.
Click "Yes": You're infected.
Click the red X at the top right: You're infected.

My mother got some malware from that. The techie who fixed things up for us provided us with the following tip: if you have a mysterious pop-up, use "Alt+F4". It will close it down without ever having to click it.

Thought I better share that tip while it came to mind.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

I just feel bad for people who fall for this crap. It's easy for younger tech savvy people to deal with this sham, but some people who are trying to learn computers which I have a lot of respect for fall into these traps and have horrible problems just trying to view their fucking daughters Facebook. I worked for a company that promoted users lack of knowledge and it pisses me off to no end to see people get taken advantage of like that.

To all the jerkasses making fun of these untechsavvy people: It's easy when you know how

 

[DanDeFool]

I got an idea for a new feature, Microsoft. Every browser window opens with a "Fuck Off and Die" button in the bottom right-hand corner that permanently kills all the scripts running in a browser window before closing it, so it doesn't have a chance reopen itself or pop up a "Would You Like To Stay On This Page?" prompt. That way, when I stumble upon one of those obnoxious "YUR COMPOOTER IZ INFECT3DZ OMGWTFBBQPWNH4X0RZ!!!1!1!" windows I don't have to reboot my goddamn computer just close the stupid thing without accidentally downloading a bunch of malware.

But until then, anyone who runs into this sort of thing on a regular basis can and should download NoScript. It's a browser add-on that lets you manually filter what sites and servers are allowed to run JavaScript/Java/Flash commands in your browser.

 

[player3141]

My friend- I went to this website and it told me that I had viruses on my computer, so I downloaded the software and paid for a subscription. The softare is really good, you should download it.
Me- *facepalm*

 

[Alphakirby]

*waves hand*
You will download this program to scan your computer for viruses.

No thanks,I have Avast and it works great for the low low price of free.

 

[McMullen]

This is news? I thought everyone who was computer literate knew that clicking "Yes" was a bad thing.

I can tell you from working in tech support that like 70% of users are computer illiterate. Very few people I know that aren't gamers, programmers, graphic artists, etc use their computers for more than solitaire, email, facebook, or craigslist. Many of them are trusting enough that they don't recognize Nigeria-speak as the red flag it is. They use some version of Internet Explorer from 1850, run Windows XP without updating, and think McAfee or Panda AV have got them covered. Against those "your computer may be infected!" popups, they haven't got a chance.

Botnets aren't going away any time soon.

 

[weirdee]

Breaking news: Microsoft spends millions of dollars and countless hours of manpower to discover that computer users are idiots.

 

[DarkTenka]

Wow .. this is news? This has been happening since the 90's

 

[Austichar]

My mom almost fell for one of those. She wa son my brand new laptop and suddenly asked me about "What's with all these viruses on your computer? I really need to download this thing to help" and I quickly stopped her.

 

[octafish]

This is news? I thought everyone who was computer literate knew that clicking "Yes" was a bad thing.

Omigod! A TAC 2!

Ahem, anyway. Even my 60 year old parents don't fall for this, although my Dad did check with me when he got the phone call about his computer's security being compromised. To his credit he did just say "This is a scam isn't it? I just wanted to check."

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

This is news? I thought everyone who was computer literate knew that clicking "Yes" was a bad thing.

Yeah, but only 1% of computer users are anything approaching computer literate.