Gangs cash in with bogus anti-virus software

Criminals are stealing internet users' bank details by tricking them into buying bogus anti-virus protection, security experts have warned.

The gangs, who are making millions from the scam, pose as legitimate IT companies who cold-call victims, offering fake security software that can be downloaded for about £30.

They then combine the credit card information from the sale with stolen personal information to defraud the customer or commit other, more complex, crimes.

Campaign group Get Safe Online said a quarter of people questioned in a recent survey had received such calls.Some gangs, employing up to 400 people, have set up their own call centres.

Sharon Lemon, from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, said: "In recent cases we have seen gangs employing 300 to 400 people to run their operations and using call centre-scale set-ups to target victims en masse.

"They can also be paying out as much as $150,000 a month to individual webmasters who are unwittingly advertising their fake software. This level of investment from criminals indicates that the returns are much heftier than this."