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Beware of mobile scareware ads which say your phone has a virus
![Beware of fake antivirus scareware ads Beware of fake antivirus scareware ads](https://www.androidauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/fake-virus-android-ad-with-url-smudged2.jpg)
This week one of the Android Authority team saw one of these ads and was able to capture a couple of very useful screenshots. Thankfully he didn’t actually download and install the app as it would have infected his smartphone with malware!
What happens is that cyber crooks sign-up to run an advert campaign via one of the big ad platforms and they deliberately hack the ads to show a dialog that tries to scare the user into downloading an app because their phone has a virus. Ironically it is the fake virus warning that ultimately leads to the device being infected!
Ironically it is the fake virus warning that ultimately leads to the device being infected!
Android/Hnd Adwo displays unwanted advertisements as notifications and it requires the complete removal of the infected app to block the ads from being pushed. It is currently ranked 7 in the world for mobile, online and PC malware and has affected more than 10,000,000 users!
It is important that you don’t follow through on these ads and don’t download or install any .apk files. You should also notify the webmaster of the site where the ad appeared.
If you do want to run an antivirus app on your device make sure you checkout our recommendations and always download it from Google Play and not from an untrusted third-party site.