I just saw this mentioned in a Jim Browning (anti-scammer) video. I have been doing PC repair and support for around 25 years and while the number of actual virus\malware infections I've encountered has dropped by probably 95% in the past 15 years, internet scams\popups\etc. are worse than ever and are genuinely costing people money (or more). Having a tool that is specifically designed to help people with these things is fantastic. It has been designed in part by another anti-scam youtuber, and it seems very well focused on solving this problem for people.
For free you can use it to on-demand scan your PC for any of the common remote access programs, services and background processes that scammers use. For free it will also run in the background and block remote access software used by scammers. I use TeamViewer to help people myself, so to test it I just ran TeamViewer and Seraph immediately popped up a box with very clear information for the user to follow, asking if it is legitimate and giving suggestions on what they should do next. There is a menu to add TeamViewer to a whitelist so that legitimate programs can be ignored in the future, which is super nice (and it does work!).
For a very reasonable fee ($48 for a year) you can sign up for the paid-for service which detects and blocks all sorts of common scammer attack vectors. These are areas that are woefully unprotected on PCs these days, so I am super glad to see this. There is also a friends and family account that will cover 10 devices for $168 per year, which may be very much worth it if you know several people that frequently get roped into scams (especially if they split the cost). One of the standout features, on top of blocking tons of malicious sites, is that it will email a relative (probably you) when something trips the scam detector. So if Mom or Aunt Betsy tend to call you for help only after they've let yet another scammer onto their PC for an hour, you will instead be contacted immediately so you can get in touch with them.
I also noticed that in the FAQ they mention that they don't want people to be left unprotected due to financial limitations, so if someone is genuinely in need but can't afford the cost they said that you can email them to work something out. Even if they don't do it for everyone, that is super thoughtful and is probably a side bonus of the program being partially backed by a youtuber (since they often can afford to do stuff like this).
Anyway, I am not affiliated with these guys at all, I just heard about it myself like an hour ago and immediately came to BleepingComputer to see if there was anything written about it yet. I was a bit surprised that there wasn't since this has been my primary source of software like this for the past ~20 years.
My normal "security suite" recommendation these days consists of the following:
Windows Security\Defender enabled and updated
uBlock Origin installed on all browsers
Notifications from websites disabled on all browsers
Never let your browser save passwords for online banking or other highly sensitive sites
Never do an internet search for a phone number that you can find another way (a bill, back of your credit card, known website, etc.)
From here on out though, I will probably be recommending Seraph Secure to anyone who either has repeated problems with scammers, is at a higher risk or requests added protection. I wish this existed 5 years ago.
Edited by Ozzuneoj, 08 September 2024 - 10:41 PM.
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