There are many ways that hackers and other data thieves attempt to take your personal details or syphon money from your account, and the use of fake or rogue anti-virus is far from being a new and innovative technique but it is apparently becoming prevalent once again.

Social networks and social media sites had proven to be one of the greatest growth areas for scams but as more people are being encouraged to get online there is a greater proliferation of two particular methods of attempting to steal personal data from your computer.

Pop up windows promising to remove viruses, spyware, and malware are a common technique. A small pop up window appears on screen warning the user that they are infected with an almost immeasurable number of Internet based threats and are encouraged to sign up using credit card details to remove these threats. Typically, the threats mentioned do not exist, no software has scanned the computer, and the only real threat is the warning message itself.

Another increasingly common way to lift such information from users is through cold calling. Call centres are even set up by organised crime gangs and these are then used to attack en masse and gain as much information as possible in as short a space of time as possible.

As the Internet phenomenon continues to boom, so too do the scammers looking to make an easy and dishonest buck.

Unfortunately, as more of us become aware that we need to protect ourselves against viruses and other threats this means that the phishers have greater opportunity to hock rogue anti-spyware and rogue anti-virus software to unsuspecting users.