Here’s how people are making money with computer viruses

Bank account theft

Virus creators are more than happy to help themselves to your bank details, sneaking in to grab your login details or credit card info. They can either transfer your funds away or use your credit card details to go on a shopping spree. Sometimes they’ll leave the fun to another person though, and simply sell your details to the highest bidder.

Ransomware

Rather than a financial snatch and grab, sometimes a virus will encrypt your files and demand money for the unlock code. Without a true backup plan in place beforehand, you’re at their mercy. You’ll be given very helpful information on how to pay, plus a firm deadline before your files are destroyed permanently. Even if you pay, there is never a guarantee that your files will be back. Тhe best way to deal with ransomware is backups!

Ad swappers

A cheeky technique, this is when they create a virus that either puts annoying ads on websites you visit or places affiliate codes on pages so that when you buy something legitimately – eg, from Amazon – they get a percentage as a ‘referral fee’. Their kickback doesn’t make your purchase cost more and you may not even know you’re supporting their activities. This is a very common issue with free software, sometimes it comes with more than you asked for!

Bitcoin mining

You might have heard of digital currencies being used for payment, but did you know you can also earn them with your computer processing power? Unfortunately, sometimes ‘renting’ out your computer’s processing power means paying more in running costs than you’d make – unless you were very clever and sneaky, and used a virus to rent out other people’s computers. Certain websites with illegal content (we won’t mention them here!) used to install a piece of malware that would use up to 100% of computer resources when the computer was idle. Many people never even noticed it.

Botnets

Certain infected computers can be remotely controlled to do whatever the virus creator wants. In this case, they’ll usually set the infected bot computers to overwhelm a target web server, like an e-commerce store. Sometimes it’s done as revenge, but more often it’s blackmail. The ‘Botmaster’ says “pay me thousands of dollars or I’ll crash your site during the biggest shopping day of the year.” For example, imagine if Amazon’s website goes down for several hours during Christmas shopping time!

Account stealing

Subscription accounts like Netflix and Hulu are often hijacked, leaving you to pay the bill for someone else’s entertainment. But sometimes, virus creators go one step further with online gaming accounts. All those digital items that you fought so hard for (special clothing, weapons etc.) can carry real-world value and be stolen from your account and sold on a black market. Yes, that’s cheating!