Pornographic virus alert from Microsoft: checking the online support scam

Pornographic virus alert from Microsoft may sound like a strange joke, but it is a new kind of online scam. This banner is likely a consequence of malware activity, and may also lead to a wide variety of unwanted effects. In this post, you will see how it works and how dangerous the pornographic virus alert from Microsoft is.

What is a pornographic virus alert from Microsoft?

The banner with this phrase, which you can see in your browser, states that your computer has a virus. You have got that malware while browsing the pornographic sites (as the banner says). And since these viruses are dangerous, you need to contact Microsoft support with a number you can find on this banner. Here the fraud begins.

After dialing the number on this banner, you will hear “Microsoft technical support”. By the way, the number is different from the one which is published on the Microsoft official website. During the call, the “support manager” will offer to give him remote access to your PC. At least this action is dangerous. A person who can control your PC can easily make the changes he wants. Delete the files, change the system settings, install a program – whatever, because now he owns this PC. And the user who trusted the strange banner will surely agree to do all these actions.

When the support boy gets the remote access, he makes some strange manipulations and then says that your PC really has a lot of viruses on board. To remove them, you need to use a “perfect and well-proven antivirus tool”. Usually, this scam is used to distribute pseudo-antivirus programs, also known as scareware. It carries a significant danger, but it is not single.

What is the danger of pornographic virus alert from Microsoft?

The initial danger hides inside of the origins of this alert. It cannot appear autonomously, since Microsoft does not send you any notifications like this. And the website which is opened (surveyprizes.bz) cannot be reached without any changes to the networking settings. These changes may be done by the adware – a specific type of virus that gains profit from its creator via showing unwanted advertisements to its victims. To show these ads, the malware makes several changes in the browser configurations. The danger of adware is hidden in the ads it shows: one may easily contain a downloading link for a virus or unwanted program.

The damage which can be dealt with by pornographic virus alert from Microsoft also has malicious origins. As I have mentioned, scareware is a parody of anti-malware software. These programs are distributed in strange methods, like fake online support, or software bundling. They have an interface that is similar to ones in legit antivirus programs, but, in fact, there is no anti-malware functionality at all. Scareware randomly blocks the components of the programs you use every day, claiming that these elements are vulnerable to malware attacks or even malicious. To remove these “hazards”, you need to purchase the full version of this “antivirus”.

Scareware is not just a useless program

This sticky program is quite hard to remove. It is not displayed in the list of installed programs. In addition, there is no uninstall.exe file in the root directory of that program, which is usual for the majority of well-known apps. And the most fatal thing is its shadow activity: a lot of scareware examples have spyware functions. These programs collect information about your system configuration, often used applications, activity hours, and so on. The removal of this app is just an essential thing if you don’t want your privacy to be multiplied by zero.

How did I get it?

Adware is a type of virus that shows you advertisements without your allowance. Every one of these ads is paid, so the adware creator gets quite a big amount of money. It is distributed in many ways, and the majority of them are described in this article. These promotions cannot be removed with the use of anti-advertising plugins for browsers, like AdBlock. The only way to get rid of them is to use anti-malware software.

Don’t think that adware is a “safe virus”, and that you can put off the removal without any serious consequences. Today it shows you a pornographic virus alert from Microsoft, but tomorrow it may substitute some of the search results with a malicious link. It is hard to distinguish a substituted link among the legit ones, so you will download a virus on your PC with your own hands.