The Contenders:

Cyberdefender is advertised as an easy solution for PCs that are running slow or are infected with spyware or adware. You may have seen the television advertisements for MyCleanPC.com and DoubleMySpeed.com. Visits to both of those websites will prompt you to install Cyberdefender software. It looks like Cyberdefender is the owner of both of those sites.

Allen Harkleroad is a well known consumer advocate, who has taken on some pretty big names in business, such as Dell, AMD, ATI, UPS and FedEx, to name a few.

The Contention:

Allen claims that Cyberdefender is a scam and has posted several articles in his websites, supporting those claims. Here’s one of them:

Beware of MyCleanPC.com and DoubleMySpeed.com Same Scam, Same Company

Here is a copy of the legal take-down notice from Cyberdefender’s lawyers:

At one point, Allen says that he:

I installed the MyCleanPC software on a fully patched Windows XP machine that I rarely used just to see what happen. Other than installing software I use nothing else had been installed and no software had been uninstalled on the machine. It does have anti virus software on it. The CyberDefender software found over 3,000errors on a machine that runs perfectly fine, never had software uninstalled and rarely was on the Internet.

I’ve heard others claim that Cyberdefender isn’t worth the asking price. I decided to try it myself. I used Microsoft Virtual PC, with a copy of the IE6 test virtual machine. This allows me to run a clean, new, fully patched copy of Windows XP. It doesn’t have anything installed on it, not even an anti-virus program. The advantage to using a virtual machine is that I don’t have to worry about messing up a real computer.

Below, I have created a short slide show, which gives the results of my simple test.

Go here if you can’t see the embedded slideshow.

Conclusion:

Let the buyer beware. If I see over 300 errors reported on a clean PC, I have serious doubts and would never buy the software.   What do you think about DoubleMySpeed and MyCleanPC? Would you buy them?

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We recently received a question asking about a new executable called FacebookUpdate.exe running on a Windows PC and whether it was a virus or not? Turns out that it is not a virus and is an official software from Facebook which is used to update the software which is locally installed on a Windows PC.

Quite recently Facebook introduced a new group chat and video calling along with Group video chat with social hangouts. Facebook asked users to download a software to their local PC in order to use the video calling feature in Facebook.

If you have downloaded the said software from Facebook, you will notice that a file called FacebookUpdate.exe is added to the startup on your Windows PC. The location of the file is in your user profile folder and runs with some parameters as shown below

%USERPROFILE%\Local\Facebook\Update\FacebookUpdate.exe /c /nocrashserver

This service is totally safe and is only used to update the software which was installed by Facebook. If you feel threatened by it, you can disable it without problems. If you are not sure how to disable services or startup items, read our earlier guides and articles.

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Today, I noticed yet another scam message spreading across Facebook. The new scam tricks users into installing a rogue Facebook application, promising them to show the list of users who viewed their profile.

Although this particular scam has been reported earlier a several times, with users being warned not to click on such messages, yet users continue clicking it and install the Facebook app. The new variant is very much similar to previous scam messages, and attempts to steal personal information from tricked Facebook users.

Did you know? 14 million Facebook Accounts are used to spread spam messages.

The new scam is spreading with the title Facebook Profile Viewer containing the following messages:

Yes! I can’t believe that you can see who is viewing your profile! I just saw my top profile viewers and I am SHOCKED from who are viewing my profile! You can also see WHO VIEWED YOUR PROFILE

WOW I just saw my top 10 profile VIEWERS. You can now see who’s been stalking at your profile for real! You can easily check who’s spying on you at [link]

My total profile views today:

Male Viewers: 31
Female Viewers: 64
See your total views and who is viewing you here

Clicking the scam will take you to the Facebook app installation page, where you are asked to grant permissions to the rogue app to post updates on your behalf and also access your information on Facebook. Providing access will put your Facebook account at high risk as scammers might try to hack it and steal all your information.

The app looks like just any other Facebook app and will ask for your permissions before taking you to a page where they will ask you to complete a survey before you can see “Who’s viewing your Facebook Profile”. However, once you complete the survey it will only make money for the scammers and not show you the information you are looking for.

Here is a list of previously reported similar scam messages spreading on Facebook:

• My Total Facebook Views Scam Spreading On Facebook
• See Who Has Viewed Your Profile Event Spam Spreading on Facebook
• Woah! My Profile Was Viewed 51 Times Just Today – Facebook Scam
• OMG! My Profile Has Been Viewed 97 Times Just Today Facebook Scam
• Who Checked Your Facebook Profile Scam Underway
• OMG Its Horrible my Ex is Still Checking My Profile – Facebook Spam

As a precautionary measure, always check which applications you use and remove unwanted or suspicious ones. If you aren’t sure how to do it, you can always check our guide on removing apps from Facebook. In addition to that, don’t forget to check out our article about Avoiding Facebook Lifejacking and Clickjacking scams.

Last week, Facebook announced the launch of phish@fb.com, an email address available to the public to report phishing attempts against Facebook.

With over 955 million monthly active users on Facebook, the social networking giant has always been the main target for spreading scams. It is quite difficult to identify scams on Facebook. Here is a post on How to Identify and Avoid Facebook Scams. Bookmark Techie Buzz Facebook Scams or Subscribe to Scam Alert Feed. We always keep you updated with the latest scams spreading on Facebook.

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