Question about those hack/fake PC scan software you see on TV

[Alilei32]

Is that stuff legit or are they blatantly ripping off people that know little about PCs by giving them a free scan that shows tons of stuff thats wrong with their PC and then making them pay for the software to fix those fake problems. I just ran one of those TV quack programs and it said I had 165 issues on my PC. I was like OK. I ran a full Malware Bytes scan. No problems. I ran a full Adaware Scan. No Problems. Full Spybot S&D scan and again no problems. Ran CC cleaner nothing wrong with my registry. How is it legal for these people to lie and say your PC is messed up to get people to buy their fake product to fix problems that arent even there?

Its even said at the end you have 165 issues slowing you down! So I start up CPUID and Im still running at 4.5 ghz no problems and all my core temps are fine. So where are all these terrible things that are slowing me down rofl?

[Pickynerd]

If it's to good to be true - it probably is.

You in the US? We don't have any consumer protection, pretty much fair game to scam the hell out of people as long as you pay tax.

[vindicatorx]

I know for a fact at least one of them intentionally reduces your performance when you "scan your PC" so you will buy the product I don't remember which one is was but there was a lot of pissed off people over it.

[Alilei32]

Cant someone report those people for fraud seeing how their product does nothing because theres nothing to be fixed? I dont understand how its legal for these people to advertise fake products on TV that invent fake PC errors so you have to pay them to fix nothing. I mean sure its genius on their part but they are just screwing everyone over that falls for their scam.

[Thaendra]

Some of them it's a 100% rip off. My dad's PC was acting up and so he called some AOL tech support (I know, I vomit in my mouth a little, but whatever if he can get help.. he is not a complicated man, technologically..) before I was home. I came home to have him talking on the phone with some guy who was saying he had "over 2,000 viruses and trojans" on his PC and to get rid of them he needed to buy their software. The person was doing the direct connect thing and looking around in his PC (my dad had no idea what he was doing). He said since we had multiple computers my dad "had" to buy multiple copies of this anti-adware program they were trying to sell for like $400. Yes, hundreds of dollars. I was like, what in the actual fk... so when I hear all of this I get on the phone and nicely try to tell the man that we will think about it (aka my cue to never talk to this crappy horrible tech support again and get the hell out of that conversation). He realized that's what was happening so he desperately tried to get us to stay, saying things like "okay just hold on the line please," "but you need this software or your information will be sold to everyone!!," and "okay but really you need this" and refused to close the direct connection to my dad's PC... so I force closed the process for the program he was using to connect and disconnected the internet connection temporarily :/ it was sad.

After, I checked to see what was wrong with the PC. I ran multiple free virus, malware, and adware scanners. Nothing came up, not one thing. Out of the supposed "2,000 viruses and trojans" that were supposedly on the PC. I thought it might be the video card driver being out of date that was causing a loading problem with one of the programs he was trying to use, and bingo that was it. I was pretty mortified that AOL is pretty much as in the dumps as we all think it is, selling out their tech support in the hopes that all of the old, technologically impaired AOL users would not know any better and shell out hundreds of dollars to have problems fixed that aren't there.

I've had programs (read: viruses) that try to do the fake scan thing on his PC before, too. The only things infecting PCs with those are generally the advertisements for the adware scans themselves.. I even had one before where it was a trojan downloading multiple adwares, then the program pointed out the adwares as a reason why you "needed" to buy their software...

[Pickynerd]

Cant someone report those people for fraud seeing how their product does nothing because theres nothing to be fixed? I dont understand how its legal for these people to advertise fake products on TV that invent fake PC errors so you have to pay them to fix nothing. I mean sure its genius on their part but they are just screwing everyone over that falls for their scam.

To the BBB, but that is just a joke any ways. Shame we don't have better laws to prevent scams, most of the time it's just wasteful use of resources.

[Alilei32]

Also most claim to make your PC faster. Isnt that impossible? I thought the only way to do that without actually upgrading hardware is go into the BIOS and OC it. I highly doubt any of that stuff is gonna make my PC run faster than 4.5 ghz. I know I can go back in and OC it back to 4.7-4.9 ghz and obviously it would be faster but they cant do that with some program.

[SpaceDuck]

you can disable a few background and startup programs that you probably dont use which would result in a faster load time, but without overclocking nothing will make it any faster than your clock speed