Head butts and elbows to the face aren’t the only things getting red cards during the 2010 World Cup. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the global popularity of the tournament by preying on computer users surfing the Internet for updates on their favorite teams. So, Symantec is interested in learning a little more about your Internet surfing and anything suspicious online you may have encountered involving the World Cup. A short survey on the subject can be found here: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AS6UQSGEW.
To provide some perspective on what kinds of cons are circulating around, Symantec recently identified a new scam in which e-mails purporting to be from the promotions manager of the South Africa World Cup Lottery 2010 are making the rounds. Recipients are informed in an attachment that their e-mail address has been randomly selected by a specially designed computer program and that they have won US$2.5 million. Of course, none of it is real.
Our survey should only take one to two minutes to complete and is completely anonymous. So, if you’re up for it, please take just a couple minutes to answer our questions and help us understand a little more about how you’re planning on using the Internet to follow the World Cup and what kinds of nefarious activities you’ve encountered. By the way, stay tuned to this space as we’ll be reporting on the anonymous survey results as soon as everything is wrapped up.
This is also a good opportunity to reflect upon a few related online security best practices:
Don’t open unsolicited e-mails or social media messages purporting to contain special offers or extraordinary deals related to the World Cup, and especially don’t click on any links in such messages.
If an online offer appears to be too good to be true, it probably is. Scammers often try to make their bogus offers sound so great that they would be nearly impossible to pass up…if they were real that is.
Be careful about what “official” social networking accounts you follow, such as those that appear to be created by World Cup teams or players. Often, cybercriminals will create accounts posing to be someone they’re not.
When searching for online video of the World Cup, avoid sites you’ve never heard of before and if you’re told you must update your media player before viewing a video, be very cautious as this might be a ploy by attackers to get you to download malware.
And last, but not least…enjoy the tournament!
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