During my Web class today, one of my learners called me over because her computer was 'infected' with a virus. The screen had turned into one giant warning message, with a list behind of her folders and files marked "infected" in red.
This gave me an excellent opportunity. Only a couple of weeks earlier, my daughter had the same message on our laptop, and the following evening, my neighbour too.
I displayed the screen using LAN school to the rest of the class. I told them the message was fake, and asked them how I could tell. No one was able to answer, though they tried moving the mouse around to see if that gave them any clues.
It was because the message appeared in a browser tab that I knew it was fake, and we closed it and opened a new browser window with no further issues.
I hope that, as a result, all my students are now better equipped to look out for such scams which tempt unsuspecting surfers (such as my neighbours) to download malicious software. The benefits of LAN software were unquestionnable in this instance.
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