What to do….what to do? You’ve gone ahead and completed a clean install of Windows Vista Ultimate; then installed PC Doc Pro to scan your new installation only to have it advise you that you have 572 problems! Worse, 31 of these problems, according to PC Doc Pro, are severe.
So was this result fantasy, or reality? Oh, it’s reality alright. It’s the reality of a rogue application that generates false positives.
Regular readers of this Blog are aware that I have focused recently on rogue security software. Rogue computer applications unfortunately come in all flavors; not just in the security field.
Simply put, rogue applications have been developed to mislead uninformed computer users’ into downloading and paying for the “full” version of bogus software, based on the false positives generated by the application.
Without question, PC Doc Pro is a rogue application extraordinaire. The product fixes 50 problems (false positives that it generates), for free, but to “fix” the rest of these false positives, you need to buy a 30-day license that costs $29.95.
Deborah Salmi, Marketing Executive at Web of Trust, a socially conscious company that takes its protective responsibilities to the greater Internet community very seriously, recently advised me that the company had encountered this exact situation, as described above, while testing the effectiveness of PC Doc Pro.
Curious, I did my own testing and investigation of this application, and essentially duplicated the results obtained by WOT. While I found the results disturbing, (I obviously don’t like to be lied to or have my money stolen), equally as disturbing was the realization that this crap program is available for download on Download.com, a site that I have never hesitated to recommend as a safe and ethical download site.
The developers and distributors of this bogus software are, using any definition, cyber-crooks. So the question is; how do these bas**rds get away with it?
One of the regular commentators on this Blog summed it up eloquently when he said, “The Internet has equalized the playing field internationally for the bad guys, but it has not equalized the playing field for law enforcement”. It would be difficult to disagree with this observation.
WOT as part of their corporate commitment to assist Internet users in safely surfing the jungle the Internet has now become, has just begun to develop a series of videos depicting what can happen to your computer if you visit a risky website, such as PcDocPro.com or download and install rogue software.
It’s important for your system security and frankly, your wallet, that you be aware of the dangers that applications like PC Doc Pro present, so be sure to check out the first of WOT’s videos at http://www.mywot.com/en/online-threats/fraudulentsite.
For a complete review of WOT’s Internet browser add-on, take a look at “Safer Surfing With WOT – Find Out How!” on this site.