I've had a lot of employees lately come to me with issues on their home PCs where they have had Fake Alert/Rogue viruses. I was planning on sending out a warning to users explaining to them that these are actually viruses. I was also planning on informing them that in order to help prevent occurrences like this they should be sure to have an antivirus w ith an up-to-date subscription. I'd also recommend if they don't have a subscription to download MSE or another free antivirus.

However, I wasn't sure exactly how to instruct them to differentiate between a legitimate windows or antivirus alert and one from a fakealert program. Does anybody have any suggestions?

**UPDATE**

*This is the message I ended up sending. I figured I should probably stay away from even mentioning their personal computers.. mostly to avoid requests to fix them. However, by sending this message, they will at least be slightly more aware of fake alert viruses out there.*

Over the last year, there have been an increasing number of computer viruses spreading that actually pretend to be antivirus software. These viruses very closely mimic legitimate windows and mac software, so it can be hard to tell whether or not virus warnings that appear on your screen are legitimate or not.

While we do have virus protection on company computers, it is still possible to get a virus by simply visiting a website… even reputable ones. If you ever have a popup that tells you that you have multiple viruses and that you need to scan your computer immediately (or do anything else), please shutdown your computer by holding down the power button until the screen turns black and contact the IT staff immediately. If you aren’t sure whether a message is genuine or not, please contact us immediately as well.

Below are some images of some of the more popular “fake alert” viruses out there.

![My Computer Online Scan](https://img140.imageshack.us/img140/4243/86228845.jpg) 

![Antivirus 2010](https://img130.imageshack.us/img130/6952/26600108.jpg) 

![41 Infections Found](https://img39.imageshack.us/img39/4938/46518981.jpg)

![Antimalware](https://img46.imageshack.us/img46/1255/28360764.jpg)

![Antimalware](https://img130.imageshack.us/img130/1982/10683986.jpg)