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Rogue Program is a program using deceptive advertising and false positives as a scare tactic to have one purchase a registered license of the software. In itself , its not harmful.
Most Rogue Programs claim that they are legitimate applications, but are typically clones of other lackluster products repackaged under new names and graphics. These programs also use highly aggressive sales tactics which include ad wares, Trojans displaying fake security alerts, or claiming that they have won awards from major publications and companies. These types of programs are either deliberately deceptive or displaying numerous false security alerts in order to convince one to purchase their software. The most important thing to the developers of Rogue software, is to sell as many copies as they can. That means that the people, or affiliates, who are selling this software can do so by any means. This ultimately leads to deceptive advertising and the use of malware to sell the software.
A common approach by Rogue programs is to display either fake results or exaggerated results when the program scans the computer. When the scan is finished, the user will be shown a list of legitimate files and Windows Registry keys that are flagged as security threats. In some cases, the Rogue programs actually create the files and Windows Registry keys on the computer so that they can be detected as malware. In order to remove these threats, the user is prompted to purchase a license of the software. These fraudulent tactics are used to scare and make one to purchase that software. Now it should be noted that there is nothing wrong with a program requiring you to purchase it before it will remove any infections. It is wrong, though, to display false information to scare you into doing it.
Another common tactic used by Rogues is to advertise, or even directly install itself, through the use of malware. Rogues programs are typically introduced in the computer when a person visits pornographic or sites that offer copyrighted content. In some cases it will be infected by just visiting these site, depending on what security updates are installed, and in other cases an executable is run. Either way, the computer will have malware installed that displays fake security alerts saying that it has got some security risk and must install a piece of software, the Rogue, to remove it.
A list of some of the Rouge Softwares can be found here.
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