The profitability of scareware and social engineering

Here’s a good article that Wired had a while back on scareware, those ads that pop up saying you’ve been infected with a virus and you should buy their product to remove it. It’s amazing what an empire you can build by exploiting people’s trust. They’re the same tricks that have been around for thousands of years, just adapted to the Internet.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/mf_scareware/all/1