What is fake antivirus and how can you know it is fake?

Rogue programs, fake antiviruses, fake security scans, fake antispyware, etc. are one of the most popular infections today.

Most of the users think these are real security products and that they do good job. And of course most of the users enters credit card details and "purchases" one of these antiviruses. And also there is huge possibility that you will be charged much more than the price declared in the shopping cart. As the time goes, these rogue antivirus and antispyware programs look more and more professional. They even tries to copy the interface of some real Antivirus or antispyware product. And also they usually come in families where the same program has more than one name. for example: "Windows recovery", "Windows xp recovery", "windows diagnostic", "windows vista recovery" is the same program with different names.

So, how to know if the program, scanning your computer is real and not one of these fake antiviruses and other rogue programs?

Here are the main symptoms of typical fake security programs:

• The program appeared from nowhere. You haven't downloaded or installed it on purpose, but somehow the program is now scanning your computer for viruses and spyware and suggests you what to do.
• You cannot close or shut down it as well as uninstall it.
• It runs various scans and "finds" a bunch of infected files on your computer. It generates error messages, that your data is at risk and you have to clean your computer immediately. It tries to scare user in every way possible.
• The full computer scan takes only a few minutes. Real antivirus or antispyware software needs much more time to scan whole your hard disk.
• Fake antivirus or antispyware main purpose is to scare user into buying this program, to fix all the "errors" it found.

However if the program, you don't know doesn't meet any of the symptoms mentioned above, I'd suggest you to do some search for the information about it. Typically searching this program name is enough to make sure what that product is. If most of the search results offers you to remove this program and suggests you instructions on how to do that, then your program is 100 percent scam.

How to protect your computer?

• If you found or a friend send you a link on the social network to a "watch this you will be surprised very very much" type of video and when trying to play it, you are suggested to install codecs or adobe flash player update, then in most cases this will be virus, spyware or rogue program.
• If you got e-mail from some institution (usually well-known company) and the content of the email is some general information without your name, and if it says that you must see the attached document, please scan it with updated antivirus and antispyware program or don't open it at all until you are really sure that this letter is real.

And of course, if You don't use antivirus and antispyware software, the possibility to infect your computer increases significantly.

Here are few screenshots of fake antivirus and security programs: