Question is, how do you detect if the anti-virus is a fake?
- Pop-up Messages- if a pop-up message comes up with a warning that your computer has been infected by viruses and malwares, most probably it is a fake intended to scare you. First of all you have not installed such a software, how can it scan your system? Even legitimate on-line scans from valid anti-virus sites such as Bitdefender needs to install a part of their system with your permission to your system.
- Known Fake Anti-Virus sites - Wikipedia have a partial list of known fake anti-virus sites. Check it out be aware of these sites.
- Pornographic Sites - Most pornographic sites is a common source of these fake anti-virus and other types of virus and malwares
- Common Disguises. fake anti-virus are usually disguised as
- A browser plug-in or extension (typically toolbar)
- An image, screensaver or archive file attached to an e-mail message
- Multimedia codec required to play a certain video clip
- Software shared on peer-to-peer networks
- A free online malware scanning service
- your wallpaper has been changed and the image says something about being infected
- every time you reboot a scan window pops up
- whenever the scan completes, you're asked to register or pay in order to remove the infections