Scareware is a trick to scare us into thinking that our computers or smartphones have become infected with malware to get us to purchase a fake application. The programs and unethical advertising practices hackers use to frighten users into purchasing rogue applications are called scareware.
In a typical scareware scam, you might see an alarming popup message while browsing the Web that says “Warning: Your computer is infected!” or “You have a virus!” You would typically see these messages if you accidentally clicked on a dangerous banner ad or link or visited a compromised website. The cybercriminals are hoping that you click on the link in the popup message to “run a free scan” and then purchase their phony antivirus software to get rid of the nonexistent problems.