If you have been around computers long enough you have almost for a certainty come across computers, whether your own or a friends, that have strange and persistently annoying pop-ups, pledging that they will fix your computer problems, which might range from speeding up your computer, to cleaning bad files from your computer, or to removing viruses from your computer. Not only are these pop-ups extremely annoying, there are in addition to these pop-ups, malware or viruses that will change your home page and even change extensions on your documents so as to render them useless.
When it gets to the point where you think that you really do need to resolve the problem, you will often find that the so-called solution to the problem is some anti-virus software that you have never heard ofand which will cost you $39.95 or thereabouts to take care of the issue. Not too surprisingly, that software is often the back part of the malware or virus to begin with, that is to say, the company offering to fix the problem is the part and parcel of the company that created the problem on your PC to begin with.
For those that think that the entity behind these malware programs are bored and inquisitive kids that just want to have a little fun and to make a little money through the internet, that theory, unfortunately, is way off base. In fact, these are institutions, some of which are either State-sponsored or State-sanctioned, that are sophisticated in what they do, how they accomplish what they do, and know how to monetize the very nasty things that they do to computers. This is, for all practical purposes, a real business, which is highly profitable, because of the sheer number of personal computers that can be attacked, exploited, and then forced to submit to paying "protection money" in order to get control back of one's own computer.
The problem of malware is so insidious that a very strong argument can be made that at a minimum, the sellers of the most popular operating system, Microsoft windows and all of its many versions, should provide as a matter of course, anti-virus and anti-malware protection as part of the purchase of the machine to begin with. While Microsoft does offer something, it does not seem really robust enough, subsequently leaving consumers and other users to avail themselves of anti-virus software to purchase on their own. The unfortunate aspect of this all, is that there is a significant percentage of consumers that don't take the precautions that are mandated in the first place to protect their computer from malware and also there are a significant amount of people that are fooled into actually loading the malware software onto their computer through an attachment to an email or similar.
The fact of the matter is malware is enormously profitable and enormously prevalent. This means, that it isn't going away anytime soon, in fact, it is a growth industry. The onus for the protection of our computers should primarily be on the provider of the operating system, so companies such as Microsoft which consistently shows yearly profits to the tune of $20 billion dollars or more, needs to do far more to protect the purchaser of its products from the dangers and real menace of malware.