FUD is becoming a very common acronym to hear in security circles. The acronym FUD has been popping up on Blog postings, emails, tweets, and at security conferences.
FUD is an acronym that stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. The phrase describes marketing schemes that are focused on using Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt to sell a product. Good example of FUD are sensational headlines such as, "Conficker Now Instructed to Steal" or more famously, "Hackers Can Turn your Home Computer into a Bomb!"
With FUD campaigns the marketer is attempting to use FUD to sell something. This marketed item could be a "security" product or FUD can be used to create a buzz around the "item at hand."
One quick way to identify FUD is spotting a headline or article that is greatly sensationalized, has a lot of speculation, or makes gross generalizations. The other critical factor in FUD is there is a lack of information in the article. FUD articles clearly point out the problem, but fail to point out how the author arrived at this conclusion.
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt pray on human emotions and marketing campaigns that exploit this will not be going away any time soon.
