Old.com
Been seeing this scam for months, in fact a quick bit of Googling will show that this has been going on for over a year and the police have been made aware, they just dont care.
Strathclyde Police are not levying fines on punters watching internet porn, the force has been obliged to explain. Scam messages, that often appear as pop-ups and pose as messages from the plod, claim a user's machine has been locked for showing adult content. Marks are told they need to pay a £100 fine over the phone in order …
... just as likely the perp is out of their jurisdiction and the *INSERT DODGY COUNTRY HERE* police couldn't give a stuff.
It's probably also a premium rate number that you have to call to pay your fee, so they sting you twice. That seems to be the usual way these things go...
Remember people - backup to a non connected medium with history, so you can go back to a point in time before your files got held to ransom or recover when your PC gets hosed.
The police would probably achieve more using the investigation budget for IT security awareness promotion.
Ermmmmm yes there is a point about taking the piss out of people. Don't know about you but I am always willing to be the 1st to stick my hand up and be counted as one who likes a little bit of schadenfreude especially when it comes down to technology.
If it shames just one person into taking a slight interest in the tools they use rather than just having a bit of tube sock fun then it's a piss take well aimed In My Humble Opinion.
I suppose they should just just stick to jubblies monthly
"...and that our organisation never asks the public for money"
Finally a clarification on all those letters I get from Strathclyde Police that a camera has spotted me speeding and I should pay a £60 fine are in fact scams.
Yes, the police never use automated systems to track people's activity and automatically fine them - what a ridiculous notion! However could smut ogglers have been caught out by this?
I had a client with this earlier today. He had even called Strathclyde Police using the number on the screen. A screen accusing him of looking at Porn. And he should then pay £100 to the police to clean it.
I know the police are short of funding... but that would be a little too far!!
Not "ransomware". No encrypted files. Just a variation of the old Fake Anti-Virus scams. Easy to delete if you know how. (Though the well known brand of Anti-Virus on the PC couldn't do anything of use)
Looks like it came in via out of date Java and Acrobat as both showed signs of compromise.
Hard to tell exactly which other viruses had been installed at the same time as my client's computer was covered with many infections, of differing ages.
The phone numbers on screen are actually for the real Strathclyde Police. Yet when my client phoned them this morning, they were not interested. Just told him to get it cleaned up as it was a common scam.
So clearly El'Reg was contacted by a different PR division - the "caring" police PR department. Not the ones who answered the phone to my client.
To be honest, I don't know why plod are wasting their time and our money on this. It is just the same old scams looking for the same old suckers to pick up the phone and hand over the credit card. I would love to know how much cash they make from these scams as it must be pretty lucrative. I have never really understood why so many home users trust what appears on their screens and just do as they are instructed.
At least my client had the sense to call me instead. I was cheaper than the scammers :)