Scamware

“Everyone in every culture knows the story of the snake oil salesmen. You know those charlatans who traveled from town to town pandering the elixir of life to anyone who would listen to their shtick.

The elixir of life, as it turned out, was mostly alcohol with some bark extracts and flavoring. But those poor old teetotalers got the kick of whiskey from the innocent elixir of life. Getting a buzz from the elixir was a new experience for them – it was worth what they paid for it – or was it?

Of course no one in this era believes in the elixir of life do they?…”

(From our Your Computer Still Won’t Bite e-book, “Snake Oil Salesmen”. You can read more about Your Computer Still Won’t Bite here. )

Most of  you have some idea what malware is – at least we hope you do. But there’s another kind of badware that no antivirus or anti-malware can detect. We call it scamware because, well, because that’s what it is. It’s the snake oil of the 21st century – and it’s touted as the computer elixir of life, but it really is a money pit.

While they’re are many different types of scamware, we’re going to focus on just two of them and those two are:

Driver Updater programs

and

One-click Fix-it programs

Driver Updater programs either cost you money or cost you computer problems – the free ones are loaded with malware and the ones that are not free cost you money. If you spend money on a driver updater program, you’d be better off throwing it in your toilet and flushing it down the drain – or better yet sending it to us because we really could use it.

If we have said this once, we have said this a million times – “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” There seems to be something hardwired into the human brain that automatically causes us to think that newer is better. I don’t know why that is, but it is. And maybe with some things newer is better – for instance, it’s better to go to the bathroom at 2:00 in the morning in a nice warm indoor bathroom than to venture outside in the snow in your skivvies to visit the outhouse.  It’s better to turn on a faucet in your kitchen sink and get water than it is to go outside with a heavy oaken bucket and stand there in the rain pumping a handle just to fill your bucket.

But with drivers, newer is not better. If your hardware devices are working well, then why update the drivers? Just because they’re newer? Is mas produced ice cream better than the kind we all used to make at home when we dragged that old ice cream machine out once a year and churned out a batch of fresh peach ice cream? With ice cream, drivers and a lot of other things, newer is not better.

Yet one of the biggest selling types of software is driver updaters. The ones that cost you money are a waste of money and most of the ones you can get free cost you more than money. And you don’t need a driver updater program anyway.

Driver updater software programs are all scamware, I tells ya.

Now let’s talk about those one-click fix-it wonders. You have seen the commercials on TV and the ads on the Web. Things like SpeedUpMyPC, MyFastPC, and the latest incarnation of them, the “FixMe Stick”.

FixMeStick promises to clean your computer of viruses and malware. Just stick it in (it’s a USB flash drive) boot-up your computer, wait 30 minutes or so and all your malware, Trojans, and viruses are gone like magic, leaving you with a fast clean PC. But wait,  do you believe that? You do? Then you need to watch this video:

This thing isn’t free – it’s $60 for 3 uses. And the man in the video was being kind when he said after asking viewers i if FixMe Stick was the end all, do all solution to computer infections and he said “probably not” We’d say “Obviously not” Many scamware programs like PC Optimizer Pro, Uniblue’s SpeedUpMyPC, and many other malware and PUPs continued to infect windows.

And we are here to tell you that no program is going to fix your PC, nor is there a one-click miracle fix for all your PC problems.

PC Optimizer Pro, FixMeStick, SpeedUpMyPC, Advanced System Care and all the other miracle elixirs of life for computers are just snake oil.

So snake oil salesmen still abound only know their audiences are millions of times bigger then when snake oil salesmen traveled from town to town in horse-drawn wagons selling little bottles of their cure-everything elixirs.

Scamware wastes your money, gives you false hope, and evades detection by most anti-malware and antivirus software.

Don’t fall for the snake oil, there’s no such thing as a one-click computer fix or one click computer speed up. If you believe there is then we have a little bottle of magic tonic we’ll sell you that will make you feel and look 20 years younger. If you’re interested, let us know.

Viruses, Malware, Trojans, Worms, Rogues, File-lockers…those are bad enough. Don’t let the snake oil salesmen drain your wallet. There is no such thing as an elixir or life or a one-click computer fix.

Take it from your friends Darcy & TC – we’re telling it like it is.

Hey if you like learning stuff like this, you’ll love our Your Computer Still Won’t Bite e-book!