Lawsuit Claims Symantec

Security firms often warn users about scareware: malicious software that performs fake antivirus scans and then demands the user pay for a cleanup. Now a lawsuit claims that the world’s top antivirus firm, Symantec, is itself a scareware scammer.

James Gross, a resident of Washington State, filed what he intends to be a class action lawsuit against Symantec in a Northern District California court Tuesday. Gross claims that Symantec defrauds consumers by running fake scans on their machines, with results designed to bully users into upgrading to a paid version of the company’s software — via redwolf.newsvine.com