The McAfee Popup Scam
If you were tricked by a McAfee popup message into disclosing your financial information, please contact your bank for help.
How to tell if a pop-up or notification is fake
Cybercriminals are smart enough to make their pop-ups look genuine, so it’s hard to tell if an alert is real. But here are a few ways to help you identify fake pop-ups:
- Look closely at the information shown by the pop-up before clicking any options. Does it seem genuine, or do the options shown seem unusual?
For example, the spoofed pop-up shown on the left has no text explaining why the pop-up has appeared. Compare that to the genuine McAfee pop-up at the beginning of this article, which includes a much more informative, and complete description.
- Does the message have spelling errors, unprofessional language, or bad grammar? Some scammers don't take care when creating their spoofed pop-ups. In these cases, the pop-up might contain badly worded messages that make it easier to identify as fake. For example, the Windows Action Center on the left spells McAfee with a lowercase 'a'.
- Does the message have bad quality logos or images? Poor images are a good indicator that the pop-up is fake. The example on the left contains a badly scaled McAfee image.
- Does the message contain a URL? A non-McAfee URL is an indication that the notification isn’t genuine, and not from McAfee.
For example, the URLs in the spoofed pop-ups shown on the left aren’t McAfee URLs. Non-McAfee URLs are another sign that the pop-up is fake. Also, consider that McAfee generally uses the mcafee.com domain, so messages from similar domains, such as mcafee.org, are likely to be fake as well.
- Do you even have McAfee software installed? If you see a pop-up that appears to come from McAfee, but you don't have any McAfee software installed, it's probably fake.