With the increased number of threats for internet users and with more and more viruses popping out, people are looking for newer ways and software to protect their machines. This situation has become really advantageous for cyber thieves and other scam artists on the internet. A number of new programs called “scarewares” are flooding the internet these days.

In a report prepared by anti-virus experts Symantec, these scarewares mostly seem legitimate and sound like real anti-viruses. Some have names like Anti-Virus 2010 or Virus killer that most of them end up buying such softwares and in the process reveal their credit card numbers or other sensitive information to the cyber thieves. More than 40 million people have been tricked by scarewares so far and Symantec has identified a total of about 250 versions of such scarewares.