If I showed you a surefire way to make a million dollars you’d certainly listen and would probably try. Now, what if I told you ten million? What if I could make you ten million in two months? Well, I’m going to use the next six hundred words to tell you.
Maybe I can’t explain it in under six hundred words, but I can surely give you the gist. This weekend I was asked about the motivation for creating viruses. I’m asked quite a bit after someone shells out hard earned money to remove nasty crud from their computer. The motivation all boils down to money.
When I first started fiddling with computers in the late 80’s and early 90’s most viruses were just junk and a nuisance. Getting rid of them typically meant manually picking them from the file system and moving on with life. Occasionally someone might of had a really bad virus that threatened the deletion of all their files; but those were few and far between.
Today, it’s not uncommon to be taunted by the FBI, Cyber Crime Lab, or Criminal Justice Department virus. Of course it’s not really the FBI and I’m not even sure if the other two departments exist. Basically, this family of viruses holds a computer ransom until two to three hundred dollars is coughed up on a prepaid Visa.
A couple years ago the biggie was the AntiSpyWare virus which crippled machines and hid all the user files. The hoax was based on the viruses from days gone that actually deleted your files. The AntiSpyWare virus was a moneymaker for the creators. Their deal was to get users to spend two hundred dollars and they can recover your files.
Scams are everywhere in the cyber world. People who fell prey to the virus, followed the instruction, and paid the so called fine didn’t necessarily recover their computer. Instead, computers were left untouched and the owners several hundred dollars poorer. I’ve heard many stories of people living hand-to-mouth who’ve spent their last money trying to recover their PC.
Inventing one of these scams requires a very good understanding of coding and spreading viruses. Many times the creator is tech savvy and understands the inner workings of a computer and the internet. In order to deploy such a virus, one would need to work with a team of similar hackers and be able to organize such a virus within days of execution.
A few months back I wrote about the newest scam on the net. Basically this one doesn’t involve great technical skills and, well, quite honestly I wish I had been clever enough to scheme this one. In fact it’s so easy anyone can do it with basic computer training.
Let’s say Mary is having problems with her HP laptop and instead of calling my company, she decides to seek HP tech support. She immediately fires up her favorite internet browser and types in “HP tech support.” Mary is provided a list of toll free numbers promising free support.
What Mary didn’t realize is the first few search results aren’t HP, they’re third party companies offering support for HP products. Generally these support lines direct callers to an offshore call center. Part of the scam is being redirected to a “senior technician” whose job it is to sell you ‘services.’ Bear in mind they don’t actually do anything and more times than not they do more harm.
I gave you several ways to make millions of dollars with little to no expense out of your pocket. Anyone can lean coding for free at sites like codeacademy.com and hacking websites is free. Basically, writing a virus is a win-win proposition. Let me rephrase that. Writing viruses is a win-win proposition if you don’t get caught by the real FBI.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can text him directly at (978) 413-2840 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)