Symantec Corp.

This pop-up screen appears to come from the FBI.

Computer users around the globe are being hit by a new kind of virus that freezes their computer and accuses them of committing heinous crimes, like distributing child porn. The threats sound real enough that victims are coughing up $200 to pay a "fine," and virus writer gangs are netting millions, security firms say.

The message that flashes across infected computer screens sounds downright scary:

"You have been viewing or distributing child porn ... violating article 202 of the Criminal Code of the United States of America," says one version, allegedly sent by the FBI. A virus victim supplied the message to NBC News.

In each case, the accusation appears on a pop-up screen while the virus simultaneously disables the computer. The message often shows the user's IP address and city, and sometimes, recent websites visited by the victim.  The most alarming version activates the victim’s webcam, takes his or her picture, and displays it on the warning.

"They are saying, 'we know who you are, where you are, and what you were doing,'" said John Harrison, a security researcher with Symantec. "They attempt to scare the heck out of you."

The victim is then offered an option: pay a fine within 72 hours, and the charges will be dropped, while the computer will be restored. 

Symantec Corp

In this version of the scam, the virus activates the victim's webcam and displays an image from it on the screen, making the warning even more unnerving

The malicious software is so cleverly crafted that it comes with 30 to 40 versions packed inside. It displays in the appropriate language for victims — English, Spanish, Russian, etc. — and invokes the local federal authorities. A U.S. victim might get a notice from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, while a Canadian victim gets one from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The message is fake, of course — and even those who pay the "fine" still have a broken computer. But victims worldwide are falling for it. Harrison said for one version he tracked, roughly 3 percent of victims actually paid up. The criminals behind that virus netted $5 million, Symantec estimates.

With results like that, other virus gangs have been quick to copy the profitable formula. Symantec believes that gangs who spent the past couple of years making money tricking consumers into paying for fake antivirus software have all taken up the fake criminal charges and fine scam.

"So many of these folks have jumped on the bandwagon," Harrison said. "They have really transitioned into this."

The general technique is called ransomware — a virus disables the computer, allegedly holding it hostage until a ransom is paid — and it's not new. But the clever combination of an abrupt interruption, the localization trick, and the severity of the accusation catches many victims unaware, and they let their guard down enough to pay the fine.

There are no hard numbers on the frequency of ransomware, but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence it's on the rise. In February, Europol busted a multi-national crime ring involving a Russian programmer arrested in the United Arab Emirates, and 10 others arrested in Madrid, Spain. There were victims across 30 countries.  Authorities in Spain said 700,000 Spaniards had contacted the government asking for help after becoming infected.

The agency issued another warning about the scam on April 11.

“Fraudsters are deploying extortion techniques using Europol's identity and logo to con EU citizens out of money,” the warning says. “Variations of this con, using the identities of other international and European agencies, are also in circulation.”

It's possible the problem is even worse than security firms realize, because many victims may not be reporting the infection, Harrison said.

"If you were at work and there was a message on your screen that said you were viewing child porn, would you run to get your IT department?" he said.

Most victims pick up the virus by visiting booby-trapped web pages that surreptitiously install software on victims' machines through "drive-by” download, or by downloading free software from disreputable sites.  In fact, some variations of the virus accuse victims of violating copyright law, knowing that is likely true.

Victims shouldn't pay the fine, Harrison said, but they should know that various software tools — including free tools available at Symantec — can rid their machines of the virus.

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Maricopa County Sheriff's Office

Robert Dale Esparza Jr.

When he finally confessed to creating a fake porn profile for his son's assistant principal, Robert Dale Esparza Jr. of Gilbert, Arizona, "sort of laughed," said Dennis Ogorchock, a detective with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Computer Crimes Unit. But soon, Esparza may be laughing from a jail cell.

Last year, Esparza created the profile of Frank Hendricsen, assistant principal of Gateway Pointe Elementary School, where his son attended, using the faculty member's full name and photos as a revenge prank, the detective told msnbc.com in a phone interview.  

Esparza, 34, believed his son's story — that Hendricsen confiscated the boy's iPod and wouldn't give it back, so the father lashed out on the Internet. Sure, he was angry when he first built the profile, but Ogorchock says Esparza "thought (the porn profile) was going to be funny and everyone would get a kick out of it."

When first confronted by the officer, Esparza even tried to claim his son made the porn profile. Given the sophisticated sexual content however — 13-year-old kids don't talk about "swingers" — not to mention the complete lack of grammatical errors, the detective wasn't buying it.

Now, a year after the May 2011 investigation into the fake porn profile and a recent week-long trial, a jury convicted Esparza of computer fraud and identity theft, two felonies for which he may face jail time when he's sentenced June 5. (Msnbc.com has been unable to reach Esparza or Hendricsen for comment.)

"The victim is pretty shaken up about the whole ordeal," Ogorchock said. "His reputation, everything he had worked for his whole career was on the line." The detective said Hendricsen learned about the fake profile on porn website xHamster from a prospective employer who Googled Hendricsen's name after a job interview for a principal position at another school. That's when Hendricsen contacted the sheriff's department.

The profile Esparza posted on xHamster — a video-sharing and online community porn hub — included Hendricsen's full name, photos of both the assistant principal and his wife scraped, or copied, from the Gateway Pointe Elementary School website, and described the couple as "swingers" looking to play.

For further humiliation, Esparza included four photos of male genitals (scraped from Craiglist personal ads, but identified as Hendricsen's), and more than a dozen "favorited" videos on the porn hub, all deliberately chosen by Esparza for their naughty school girl themes. 

And to ensure the incriminating content would be among the first results for anyone who Googled Hendricsen's name, Esparza accessed the profile at least 25 times, Ogorchock said, communicating with other xHamster members and using the profile in the casual encounters section of Craigslist.

The reputation bomb worked so well, the detective quickly tracked down Esparza via the IP address provided by the happy-to-help xHamster webmasters, who also removed the fake profile after Hendricsen contacted the site.

The Internet trail led to a computer which belonged to Esparza's employer — Safeguard, a locally owned, home-security company (where, the Arizona Republic reports, Esparza no longer works). Ogorchock connected Esparza to Hendricsen via the police report the angry father filed against the assistant principal for allegedly taking his son's iPod, an accusation that was never proven.

That led to a warrant and search on Esparza's work laptop, which revealed visits to xHamster, Craigslist, the school website where he scraped the photos, and the Google Gmail account he created using Hendricsen's name. Despite the evidence and the confession, Esparza turned down probation and went to trial, which Ogorchock thinks Esparza did, hoping the jury would be sympathetic to him. Now he'll be lucky if he avoids jail time.

Even as bemused as Ogorchock is by this convoluted tale of iPod-inspired anger, he gets that in the end, it's no laughing matter.

"People who think these kinds of pranks are funny don't really understand how the Internet works," he said. "In this case, who knows what's been done with the information (on the fake profile) before it was taken down, who's seen it and how many copies are out there? Once something's posted on the Internet, it's out there forever."

Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet privacy. Tell her to get a real job on  Twitter and/or Facebook. Also, Google+.

More on the annoying way we live now:

• Students arrested, expelled for making violent Twitter threats
• Don't 'friend' students on Facebook, NYC teachers told
• Mom's Facebook photo pops up on porn, dating sites
• Priest apologizes for dropping f-bomb on Facebook

On a week when it seemed half of America was weighing why French parents were superior, the other half was cheering for "laptop-shooting dad."

The irony can't be missed. An essay by Pamela Druckerman, based on her new book "Bringing up Bebe," was the most popular story on the Wall Street Journal's website all week. It extolled the virtues of teaching kids patience and of learning the value of a firm, quiet "no."

On the other hand, Tommy Jordan, angry dad from North Carolina, became an overnight Internet folk hero for meting out gunslinging justice to his rebellious 15-year-old, who had recently posted a disrespectful update on her Facebook page.  On Thursday night, he posted the act of discipline on his daughter's Facebook wall, and on YouTube. By Monday morning, a stunning 21.4 million people had watched it -- far more than watch an episode of “American Idol”or even NBC's “Today” show.  We’ll hear Jordan’s reaction to his viral sensation -- and whether he’d change anything about the incident -- in a moment.

While  experts interviewed by msnbc.com were highly critical of the public nature of the discipline, the vast majority of parents expressed enthusiastic approval for Jordan, most pointing out that it's high time "someone stood up to these spoiled kids."  An unscientific poll of 93,000 voters on Today.com found 74 percent agreed with Jordan's brand of discipline. Some avid supporters even urged Jordan to jump into the presidential race. He demurred, but publicly endorsed Ron Paul.

Jordan has also used his newfound fame to publicly endorse a website in which he has a financial interest, a classified-ad service called Another Man's Junk. He's encouraged visitors to donate money to the Muscular Dystrophy Association and says he's helped raise $5,000.  And, he's monetized some of that YouTube traffic by adding an advertisement at the beginning of the now famous video.

"To those who are pissed because the copyright statements are on the video and it's been monetized.... well, I've got to pay for the attorney's somehow. Get over it," he wrote on his Facebook wall on Saturday.

He needs lawyers because Jordan's opened a Pandora's Box with his video. There is a small army of imitators making parodies, and Jordon expressed fear that some parent may carry gun-wielding discipline too far, and he might get blamed. He's also instructed lawyers to protect his copyrights and threatened to sue others who repost his video without attribution. He's facing some Internet-style harassment himself -- someone posted a good bit of personal information about him on a website.

He was also visited by the police and Child Protective Services during the weekend.

"Of course they came. They received enough ‘Oh my god he's going to kill his daughter’ comments that they had to," he wrote. He made light of the visits, however.  The police congratulated him, he said, and one officer added that he planned to use the video in presentations he does for the school system. 

The social worker interviewed Jordan and his daughter separately and was satisfied, Jordan wrote.

"At the end of the day, no I'm not losing my kids, no one's in danger of being ripped from our home that I know of, and I actually got to spend some time with the nice lady and learn some cool parenting tips that I didn't know," he wrote.

Despite the surprising notoriety, Jordan said he'd do it all over again in a statement designed to answer questions posed by reporters. (He’s so far not responded to msnbc.com’s request for an interview.)

“If I had it to do again... let's see... I'd do it almost the same," he wrote on his Facebook page in a note addressed to Anita Li of the Toronto Star. He wouldn't be smoking in the video, he said, then added, "I'd have worn my Silverbelly Stetson, not my Tilley hat, if I'd known that image was going to follow me the rest of my life and I'd probably have cleaned my boots. That's it."

More of his response:

"To answer 'Why did you reprimand her over a public medium like Facebook' my answer is this: Because that’s how I was raised. If I did something embarrassing to my parents in public (such as a grocery store) I got my tail tore up right there in front of God and everyone, right there in the store. I put the reprisal in exactly the same medium she did, in the exact same manner.”

Did the video have the intended effect?

"I think it was very effective on one front. She apparently didn’t remember being talked to about previous incidents, nor did she seem to remember the effects of having it taken away, nor did the eventual long-term grounding seem to get through to her. ...This time, she won’t ever forget and it’ll be a long time before she has an opportunity to post on Facebook again. I feel pretty certain that every day from then to now, whenever one of her friends mentions Facebook, she’ll remember it and wish she hadn’t done what she did.”

Jordan said he and his daughter have talked about the video and reached a "semi-truce," and that when he showed his daughter the comments that Internet users left on the YouTube page, she was "astounded."

"People were telling her she was going to commit suicide, commit a gun-related crime, become a drug addict, drop out of school, get pregnant on purpose, and become a stripper because she’s too emotionally damaged now to be a productive member of society. Apparently stripper was the job-choice of most of the commenters. Her response was 'Dude …  it’s only a computer. I mean, yeah I’m mad but pfft.' She actually asked me to post a comment on one of the threads (and I did) asking what other job fields the victims of laptop-homicide were eligible for because she wasn’t too keen on the stripping thing.”

And on the biggest lesson learned through the incident:

"She’s seen first-hand through this video the worst possible scenario that can happen. One post, made by her Dad, will probably follow him the rest of his life; just like those mean things she said on Facebook will stick with the people her words hurt for a long  time to come. Once you put it out there, you can’t  take it back, so think carefully before you use the internet to broadcast your thoughts and feelings."

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More on parenting from Today.com

• Mom makes wayward teen stand on side of road with a “Honk if I need education” sign advertising his 1.22 GPA 
• Why making your kids cry for YouTube views is not bad 
• Hot sauce used in discipline

Wisconsin clerks worked hard to fix a computer glitch on Thursday that incorrectly placed some voters far away from their homes and into Africa.

"It's been a little amusing," Sheboygan County Clerk Julie Glancey told msnbc.com on Thursday. "We had a number of voters who showed up on the computer map on the coast of Africa and we had to drag them back to the state of Wisconsin."

It was not clear how many voters were affected by the glitch that caused the computer system to default to an address from across the Atlantic Ocean, Glancey said. She said her county had at least 50 cases.

According to the Journal Sentinel in Milwaukee, the mix-up could cause even more frustration for some voters already affected by the redistricting law approved by legislators last summer.

The Journal Sentinel was first to report the story.

For example, voters on Election Day could show up at the wrong polling location or not be able to find their name at all at the polling place, according to the newspaper.

State election officials told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that they're working with county officers to fix the problem well in advance of the Feb. 21 primary election.

Said Glancey: "We learned that it's just as much work bringing them back from the coast of Africa as it is bringing them back from across the street."

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

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• 3 teens shot dead in Philly ambush
• Number of Chinese students in US colleges soars
• More see class conflict between rich and poor