Scareware sites using SEO to Trick Searchers

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Tue, 24 Mar 2009 by Pete Handley

The BBC is currently running a report about Scareware websites using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to trick searchers into downloading malicious spyware and programs onto their computers.

These rogue organisations are optimising sites that they have access to for popular and misspelt search terms and conning the people that visit their websites into thinking that they have viruses on their machines.

These are pretty sophisticated criminals who are manipulating web pages that have rankings and stuffing these full of popular search terms in an effort to lever some traffic to these pages, and releasing pop ups on these pages letting users know that they have a virus on their computer.

Tricks like this have been played out on the internet before – I can’t remember the amount of times that I have had a pop-up telling me that my computer was infected – but clicking on a link and downloading that is almost certainly going to get you infected.

However, I’m not sure that the people that have written this report have really grasped how SEO is being used to manipulate these searchers into downloading the scareware – as the concepts that they discuss being used to achieve these rankings are not likely alone to achieve the rankings on popular terms that they are saying are being used. Tactics like “seed pages with popular keywords such as “Obama” but others use terms associated with recent events” are not likely alone to achieve a ranking.

Later in the article though it talks about redirecting visitors from a page they were expecting to the sites advertising this scareware suggests that they are intruding web pages that already have a ranking and the risks with this are greater, as a visitor may think that they are going to a trustworthy site and give more credence to the pop up telling them that their computer is infected.

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