“There’s a new trend out there designed to scam computer users: web sites that sell bogus software. Not only does the software not do what it claims to do, but the companies that sell this ‘software’ get a hold of your credit card and can do even more damage to your bank account,” Intego, a company specializing ine Macintosh security, reports via the company’s blog.
Intego has spotted one such company, claiming to sell Macintosh antivirus software. MacGuard claims the following:
Macguard’s high-tech system scanner will search your hard drive for malicious objects such as Adware, Spyware and Trojans, cleaning your files, eliminating the threats, and securing your privacy in just a matter of minutes. Its Real Time smart protection will also ensure new threats will not even reach your desktop.
Intego reports, “But what’s interesting is that Winiguard claims exactly the same thing. Not only is that claim the same, but every word on the two websites is identical.”
“One way you can spot a fake is that when you click what is supposedly the product’s download link, nothing downloads. So you can see that there’s no software behind the web site. (On the Winiguard site, something does indeed download.) If you are gullible enough to purchase this software from a company you have never heard of, who has no references, and whose web site is vague and imprecise, it is likely that you will find additional charges on your credit card,” Intego reports. “ArsTechnica reports that more than 30 million people have been scammed by such software.”
Intego advises, “We all know that security is a serious risk when using a computer, and especially the Internet, but one should not blindly trust a web site just because it claims that its software will do something.”
Full article here.
[Attribution: TUAW. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “RadDoc” for the heads up.]
Damn straight! I still don’t trust this Microsoft company saying that it’s software can run my peecee.
I went to macguard’s website and a log-in screen appeared. With no option to register or create an account and only a prompt to contact them via email, I entered bogus log-in info and received a 404.
For more information regarding our services please email us at info@macguard.com
MacGuard Security Consulting, Inc.
Lake Oswego, Oregon 97035
“ArsTechnica reports that more than 30 million people have been scammed by such software.”
Any takers on how many of those 30 million peeps were PC/Winblows users? 99.999999999999%?
Unless you’re trying to protect corporate Mac computers, AV is still unnecessary even as the Mac market share is approaching 10%. If you must have it, you can get iAntivirus for free from a multimillion dollar reputable company whose products I used on my PC.
Speaking of software scams, I downloaded the following shareware from Apple’s web site:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/networking_security/packetstream.html
An interesting thing happened when I started it up. It asked for my admin password. Me being suspicious, I put in a bogus one and it accepted it and launchedthe program! That indicates to me something fishy.
OS X itself wouldn’t allow anything to install without a legitimate admin password-it just doen’t work that way. Nice try though.
doesn’t work, that is.
Mac antivirus? ClamXav!
It’s free and open source.
http://www.clamxav.com/
MacGuard: a simple transfer of wealth from Americans who work for their money to some asshole crook who calls himself Paul Aspen. This guy is a real piece of work; he set up his MacGuard serve in Latvia.
His e-mail is (supposedly) paul.aspen111@gmail.com
The rest of his information…
http://whois.domaintools.com/macguard.net
…appears to be designed to prevent people from getting hold of him.
A quality product would have quality advertising. Here’s theirs:
<I>
>RescueScan Technology – With Ultra-high speed scan rescueing yours MAC from Viruses for few seconds!
>Macguard finds out and removes more than 100000 Trojan horses, Spyware, Viruses, Hackers, Adware, Keyloggers and another harmware;
>Macguard allows scan files quickly and access other features Killspyware directly from Finder<.I.
I’ve seen better English in most Nigerian spam messages!
@ G4Dualie
The offender in this case is MacGuard.net, not MacGuard.com
You attempted to go to the wrong site. Other than possibly bad web pages, MacGuard.com seems to be an innocent party.
Don’t sweat it guys. Go to MacGuard’s international website. The download is free. All they ask for is your Passport Number.
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This trend is new? Did the author just turn on his first computer?
And how many times does MDN redirect to a spoofing website? You guys have nothing to be smug about, you play the same game.
@HMCIV
We have a name for those kinds of “comments”. Is this another rampage?
Sometimes I like to surf to sites that are known Winblows malware sites just to sit back and laugh (smugly, of course) while nothing happens.
Ahhhh….it’s the simple joys in life.
Don’t think Macs are safe these days. There is cross site scripting that got me. I was on Zyxel’s site and used their search area to look at some UTM products. Then my Intego Virusbarrier came up that their was a Unix arc bomb trojan trying to download on my system. I repaired it. I then emailed Zyxel’s webmaster with my logs and they shut their site down for 2.5 days. What does that tell you. They found something! And Mac ‘s are vulnerable. I was using Firefox 3 with “noscripts” but had it set to “allow” on Zyxels site.If I did not activate allow I may have missed that trojan download driveby.
I run both Intego and iAntivirus. They both run nice with each other. No real performance hit I can see having two AV running. I want both since I delve into some obscure internet security sites that I want both Java and Flash disabled and AV/Malware protection running.
I love reading virus news articles on a Mac and imagining a PC user in torment. Follow Steve Jobs and everything’s OK though.
@Macintosher
How can you tell if you are NOT owned right now?
You can’t, you have nothing to tell you so. Even though 20% of all malware and viruses are being undetected by all of the worlds AV venders. Have something to find 80-90% of what’s out there is logically smart. Even if you own a Mac.
iAntivirus is an advanced AV/malware program. It won’t be free forever. It would be smart to load iAntivirus and ClamXav if you don’t want to pay money. ClamXav can be idle and not running and scanned when you want. Both can, but ClamXav is just a double check for me. It is not that advanced and scans for Windows and Unix based viruses, but I question how good it is with malware.
Here is a link to what iAntivirus looks for. The page you are linked to will be in the “a’s” move to the “b” and so on.
http://www.iantivirus.com/threats/
.
Anyone here complaining about the lack of FireWire on MB?
I don’t understand, how is it possible, all these posters and not a single one about this!
Bogus
@Unsolicited Opinion
Nah my panties are just still in a bunch.
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MDN… there is a false lead in your widget that has a title “Windows Viruses, Malware tops one million mark: Macintosh Unaffected”
When I click on that link it takes me to a page with this article on it, with no comment section.
@Jim-TIV
They pulled it, because it was cross-site scripting with a Unix arc bomb trojan stealth download that affected all Macs.