Whilst doing my daily rounds today, I came across a very interesting post regarding FinallyFast.com on the WOT Forums (FinallyFast.com scorecard) which is advertising PC SpeedScan Pro on TV networks. You may have already seen them and considered making this purchase to further secure your computer. Please do not buy this as it is currently being categorised as a scam.

Here is why:

PC SpeedScan Pro scans your PC and alerts you of errors on your system which affects performance. Once it has finished it then provides a report where you then have to pay money to fix the errors. Right clicking the SpeedScan system tray icon opens another window where hidden within small text is an option called ‘Alert Settings’ which most people would never check. Once opened you will see that this program defaults to run on windows start up and show error warnings.

As if this is not enough, how about suddenly being confronted with 457 Severe errors at the end of the scan! Would you think this normal? Yes, many PCs have some errors BUT 457 would surely cause a great deal of system instability if not leave you with a dead system!

So, for those unfortunate to be using this software, you will not only be bemused with these results but will have to pay this company to remove them, if they really exists!

And for this amazing price of $29.95 saving $10.oo dollars!  Too cheap in which to miss out on but not too expensive as to deter customers! So, where is the problem you say, seems ok to me, well, a test was conducted on this software using a clean system and trusted tools (CCleaner and Auslogics) in which to determine what problems were already on the machine. PC Speedscan appeared to find things that were not previously detected!

Those of you with come computer savvy will undoubtedly be thinking “I smell a rat here” and quite rightly so. What this software is showing is clear signs of rogue scareware. (Rogue Scareware is designed to frighten many computers users into purchasing a product by bombarding them with fake or unrealistic levels of errors and infections which often do not cease even after payment).

Another disturbing part is that this company uses the Microsoft Partner logo! Unofficial or not, it is a good means in which to grab unsuspecting buyers. Perhaps someone at Microsoft will look into this further. I will drop them a DM through Twitter on the issue later.

What can you do:

• Well apart from avoiding being scammed, you should alert your friends to this software.
• Record details of the time, date, station and channel that you saw this advert then write a complaint to your advertising standards authority and the station who broadcast it.
• Get your friends to use the WOT Safe Browsing toolbar. This will help them to avoid malicious sites and becoming a victim of crime.
• if you already have it on your system or that of a friends, uninstall it quickly and seek the help of a good free malware removal service.
• Use Hosts files on your PC to avoid malware sites.

My thanks to WOT (Web of Trust Community) and BobJam of www.TechJaws.com for alerting me to this threat, which I used as reference material with permission.

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