Beware of Holiday Phishing Attacks
by Frank Jovine on 12/23/2009 in Scams & Hoaxes, Security
Hackers are armed and ready this holiday season in what could be one of the biggest phishing attacks yet. Hackers will be sending holiday and post holiday spam that will offer huge savings. Hackers will do anything possible to lure in their next victim.
Unfortunately, many generous and unknowing victims will end up surrendering their identities and credit card numbers.
With so many customers shopping online throughout the holidays, hackers are creating a fake alert from the Electronic Payments Association, warning that a payment was denied or rejected, while advising the victim to click on a link to view a report. In all likelihood, the embedded link is infected and will lead a user to a malicious Web page that distributes malware.
Be suspicious of unsolicited email and online ads, especially if the email contains links that come in the form of a shorten URL. It’s important to take a few minutes and do some research on the organization making any such offers. It’s best that you save yourself the trouble and just delete unsolicited spam from you inbox.
Fake Letters from Santa – Some parents may be reluctant to click on an ad from Santa in order to convince their children that Santa is the real deal. Do not click on these ads as they contain malware.
Avoid buying anything advertised via e-mail, and instead go directly to a trusted site.
TechJaws wishes everyone a happy and healthy holiday season!
sandrina
Jan 4th, 2010
Holiday seasons are perfect opportunity for hackers and spammers to use our trust. The other drawback of this phenomenon is that even if we receive a real holiday discount offer or a card from a friend we or our email system can discard it as a spam out of cautionary.
John
Jan 5th, 2010
It really is so sad that such people would sink that low and use a fun family season to try to run scams. People have their guard down at that time of year, so it really makes it sad if they become a victim.