Beware of Registry Cleaner Scareware Scams
Photo by: Lu_lu
Washington Attorney General’s office is suing two Texan companies for allegedly running an internet scam. It is prosecuting them for scaring people into paying useless pieces of code, a tactic called Scareware in scam jargon. The two companies, Branch Software and Alpha Red, Inc., marketed a program called ‘Registry Cleaner XP’ online.
The program would be familiar to most net users. It often pops out as a system warning on users’ computers when they are surfing online. The message is headlined: “CRITICAL ERROR MESSAGE! – REGISTRY DAMAGED AND CORRUPTED”. It goes on to make them believe something is very wrong with their PC. It prompts them, next, to click on an ‘OK’ button in the message box.
The click takes users to the ‘Registry Cleaner XP’ website. Here, they are asked to run a free online scan on their computer to determine what’s wrong. The scan comes up with 43, of what it calls ‘critical errors’, with the users’ system.
Users are asked to pay $39.95 and download the Registry Cleaner XP software to rectify all the errors. When they download and run the program, it eventually doles out a message saying all errors have been fixed.
The suit alleges the messages are being sent capriciously by the companies; the scan really does nothing and is merely a gig. The scan, it was found, always turned up the same ‘43 critical error message’, to every user.
Prosecutors say this was done deliberately to scare online users into believing something was wrong with their computers. Actually, they say, there was nothing wrong with users’ computers and the whole thing was setup to make them buy worthless downloads from the companies.
Source: Washington AG Office’s Press Release
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October 10th, 2008 at 10:21 am
[...] is the original post: Beware of Registry Cleaner Scareware Scams Categories: Online ScamTags: 419-legal-forum, american-income, american-income-life, fraud, [...]
November 28th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
This has been around for quite a while though…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/askjack/2005/nov/07/registrycleanerscam
February 19th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I recently purchased a registry cleaner and my pc is running much better. It use to crash and get errors but now i don’t have a problem.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Yeah loads of dummy software companies trying to frighten non techie with these tactics. When looking for a top registry cleaner, make sure you check who’s the vendor.