I recently ran across an article about how there’s a little town in the middle of nowhere in Russia that has the fastest internet in Russia, and some of the most advanced internet technology, as well as extremely rich residents for its small population.  How could this possibly be!  It doesn’t make any sense that there are so many rich people in such a small little town in the middle of nowhere does it?  When you consider the rampant popularity of online fraud, and that this small little town perpetrates some of the largest online scams out there, then it makes perfect sense.

There are a swath of Western Unions are car dealerships that have popped up in this town, simply because of the massive amount of scamming going on.  Almost every person around 30 or younger is a scam artist online.  This is far different from the scam artists that you might have seen in a movie.  Those guys are more focused on the long con, or gaining trust with the person they’re going to scam, and then taking advantage of it in an elaborate, well thought out ploy.

The frustration of getting scammed by someone on the other side of the globe.

The scammers that rule the internet are much less subtle.  One of the most popular scams of the past few years has been the fake antivirus scam.  This is something I’m sure you’re intimately familiar with as you probably browse around the internet quite a bit and run into it very often.  It goes like this: you’re browsing around for music or reading news and all of a sudden you get a popup of a window that looks like it’s scanning your computer.  It shows a bunch of different viruses and infections popping up as “recognized” on the window in bold red colors, signifying that they are a serious threat to your computer.  Next, it says “Your computer is infected!  Download our FREE antivirus program to completely clean your computer!”

Pretty soon, you are so alarmed that you’ve clicked on this and are breathing a heavy sigh of relief as you install what you think is an extremely helpful piece of software.  But wait!  Why would this pop up randomly on the internet?  As with everything in life, you must be very considerate of motive before you accept anything on blind faith.  What is the incentive for a program like this to pop up and let you know, out of the kindness of its creator’s own heart, that you have viruses on your computer?  Perhaps they want you to buy the program?  Perhaps it’s a fake program, designed to give you the feeling of security when in fact it may be more malicious than any of the common viruses that computers are actually infected by.  There are just a few things to think about when you’re considering this particular type of online scam.  It’s known as the fake antivirus ploy, and now that you have a bit more information about it hopefully you will be savvy enough to avoid it in the future.