For the many who have been scammed by rogue and scareware security applications, this recent news from the U.S. FTC may come as a welcome update:

"At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a U.S. district court has issued a temporary halt to a massive "scareware" scheme, which falsely claimed that scans had detected viruses, spyware, and illegal pornography on consumers' computers."

According to the FTC, more than one million victims were conned into buying security products (WinFixer, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus, to name a few) as part of this $100 million scareware scheme. Read more in the FTC news release.