MMO-Champ Ads and the Virus Detected Scam

[Firecrest]

To Boubouille or whoever runs this sort of thing:

Talk to your advertiser site please. This kind of stuff does no good for anyone.


To MMO-Champ users:

I wanted to take a moment to let you know about a scam advertisement that you may encounter on this site. I've run into this twice in the past 10 hours and have seen more than one topic started in the past couple days that goes something like this, "MMO-Champ has a virus! My antivirus says so! What antivirus program do I have? Uhh... I dunno. Whatever's on this computer. It says there's a virus though!" This is the source of those posts.

You will be browsing along and click to a new page. Instantly, your browser closes and a dialog box pops up that looks like this:



Click X (NOT "Cancel"). Click X again on the "Are you sure" confirmation. You are now free to go back to whatever you were doing.

That's really all you need to know. Below are some shots of the follow up, should you have accidentally clicked "Cancel" instead of X.

First it will open up a web page that looks like your computer is running a virus scan. Lo and behold, the scan will come back positive and it will tell you your computer has a virus. It really did nothing. It scanned nothing and comes back positive whether your computer has a virus or not. Step one to identifying a malicious program? Text that's not even in proper English. Step 2? I don't even have a second hard drive. lol



The next thing it does should you try to cancel out is to pop up a pretend Windows Security Alert that looks like it came from your computer. This is to catch all the people who are starting to get a little suspicious. It looks like it came straight from your computer, so how can it lie, right? Note that the entire window is a click through link to download the software. No matter what you click here, you will be prompted with the third image.



Lastly I've included an image of the dialog box that pops up when you make a choice that results in an attempted download. This is your last line of defense. Click "Run" here and you're screwed.




Some important notes:

This is not affiliated with MMO-Champion. It comes through the site that runs the advertisements that you see at the tops of pages and various other places on MMO-Champ. It is not a virus or a keylogger or a hack. It's just a dishonest way of getting unsuspecting people to download (and eventually pay for) a shoddy virus protection program.

I didn't go far enough to see, but there's a good chance that if you do download the program and decide not to pay the fees they ask for their "services", it will find a myriad of ways via pop ups (even when you're not on the internet) to let you know their shit's still for sale. It will be annoying as hell and likely will be VERY difficult to remove.

If you already have downloaded this program, try Windows Defender. This is Microsoft's free (no, really, 100% free - no 'free trial' BS here) security software. I've found it to be top notch in solving these kinds of problems.


To anyone who feels the need to reply:

I'm gonna head off a couple things real quick. This message is intended for people who will see this malicious program. It's not for all of you who won't. To that end, there are two points I need to make.

I use IE. I am aware that Firefox (and other browsers) have ways to disable ads completely on a site. However, I feel that you're only shooting yourself in the foot when you visit a site and completely bypass their source of revenue for continuing to provide the content you came to see. If everyone did what you did, your favorite sites would no longer be free to visit or even exist at all.

I run minimal security settings on my PC. Most good virus protection programs won't even allow an ad like this to close your browser and pop up the first box, let alone allow you to take the steps that would download anything to your PC. If you don't know what to do when you see things like this, then you should consider getting some virus protection. If you're not very computer savvy, head on in to a Best Buy or some other computer store and ask for advice. Get name brand protection. Random stuff like this that tries to trick you into buying their product is something no one needs.

[ELYPOP]

I use IE, so thanks, much appreciated.

[Sarcasm]

Also make sure to do this: http://www.mmo-champion.com/general-...rting-bad-ads/ if you see these ads.

[bebel]

Hi! Some problems appears becouse of the wrong antivirus so that i recommend you to change the one you have. Personally i use a version of kaspersky. You could try it too

---------- Post added 2010-07-07 at 09:06 AM ----------

I must complete telling you kaspersky 7 is the best becouse i tested 10 too this is not so ok