Beware of Scammers on Newsworthy Events
“Within 24 hours we can expect in excess of 100 million spam emails,” Symantec’s Steve Martin told SecureComputing.com.
When a large media event happens, you can count on social media sites to start buzzing about the topic. And when you have a popular topic, you can count on scammers finding a way to prey on the curiosity of the masses.
As everyone probably knows by now, the worlds’ most notorious murderer, Bin Laden, was killed on Sunday night by U.S. Navy Seals, setting off records of chatter across the Internet. Twitter, for example, set records numbers on tweets per second about Bin Laden’s death. Then President Obama made his speech, sending even more activity across the web. Unfortunately, this attention to a specific topic gives social media scammers an opportunity trick inquiring minds on the topic of Bin Laden’s death.
Bin Laden’s Death and Social Media Scammers |Fox News Report
Here are some highlights of some of the social media scammers schemes regarding Bin Laden’s death as reported by Fox:
“…within hours of that (Obama speech), warned Kaspersky analyst Fabio Assolini, the company began finding search engine optimized (SEO) Web pages offering news of bin Laden’s death and claiming to offer photographs of the slain terrorist. Clicking those links directed Web surfers to malicious Web pages that try to install Best Antivirus 2011, a rogue anti malware program, Assolini said. Another Kaspersky researcher uncovered a Facebook spam campaign offering “free subway rides and plane tickets” to “celebrate Osama’s death.” Users visiting the malicious page were asked to enter personal information to win a prize, but end up spamming their own friends with the solicitation, he warned. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/02/usama-bin-laden-death-joy-cyberscammers/#ixzz1LEavKpPv
As always, be careful of any newsworthy items that requires you to download something or accept an application in exchange for any type of personal information.