There is a new malicious scam out there which poses to be the Met, the Police’s Central e-Crime Unit has recently revealed.
The reports suggested that the so called “ransomware” tricked random members of the public to pay up “to unlock” their “frozen” computers.
The malware tracked PCs which entered certain websites, logging on to which triggered a pop-up window which “froze” the machine.
The pop-up window was masked as the Met’s Police’s Central e-Crime Unit’s message which said that users had to enter their bank account details in order to get their computers working again.
The e-Crime Unit issued a statement saying:
“This is a fraud and users are advised not to pay out any monies or hand out any bank details. Genuine law enforcement agencies would never contact members of the public via this method and demand funds in this way.”
There is a growing trend of “ransomware” scams. These masquerade themselves as lawmakers who are monitoring the users’ online activity and therefore have the right to demand funds.
This especially applies to users who use Torrents and other p2p (peer-to-peer) systems.
This particular instance saw 36 people lose out their money from a total of 1,100 infected machines. However no one has been arrested as yet.
