Volume of Rogue Anti-Virus Applications Increasing To Alarming Rates

Those crafty rogue spyware removers appear to be increasing in both volume and the speed in which they are spreading from computer to computer.

According to a report released on Wednesday from PandaLabs, it appears to be tens of millions of systems that are infected with rogue anti-virus programs.

PandaLabs, the software security company responsible for many legitimate anti-virus applications, have released a report stating that over the course of just one year, the number of illegal anti-virus programs has increased from 1,000 to 111,000, and for the second quarter of 2009, that number had tripled.

Regarding this rather alarming influx of rogue anti-virus software, which generates false security alerts in order to scare people into purchasing the useless program, the technical director of PandaLabs, Luis Carrons, said, "We've created a specific team to deal with this." And a good thing, too. Not only do these fraudulent applications attempt to milk you of all your hard-earned money, but there is also the chance these fake anti-virus programs may download a Trojan or other malware onto your computer.

In recent research done by PandaLabs, apparently 3 to 5 percent of people who scanned their computers for fake anti-virus' were infected. Using this estimate and worldwide computer stats from Forrester, PandaLabs managed to approximate that there could be as many as 35 million computers infected per month with these rogue anti-virus applications.

Sean Paul-Correll, a PandaLabs threat researcher, went on to state that, "The general consumer doesn't understand the threat. No legitimate anti-virus vendor will start a scan automatically on your computer without your consent."

Have you been plagued with a rogue anti-virus application lately? If so, share your experience by posting a comment below.