Online scammers already taking advantage of bin Laden’s death
Of course, people want to know more about Osama bin Laden and how the raid on his compound went down. Everyone’s curious. Thing is, the people who make malware software programs know you’re curious. The people who want to make your computer part of a botnet know you’re curious. The people who want to trick you into giving away details of your personal identity know you’re curious. And they’re all planting fake links all over the Internet to rope you in. Because that’s what they do.
We talk to Paul Roberts, editor of Threatpost.com, the news blog for Kaspersky Labs. He says the best thing you can do is to get your news and information from sources you already know and trust. Don’t give in to your reptile brain and click on the grossest pictures or descriptions of bin Laden post-raid.
Paul says that while the malware creeps are gaming the search engine optimization to get their links to appear high in results, there are nefarious goings-on over at Facebook as well. On Facebook, you might see a link to a story and if you click on it, he says, “It will say if you want to see video, fill in info about yourself, like name and email. So it’s really harvesting personal information with the promise of viral video of capture of his body. Then when you do that, you get redirected to another page that wants more information from you.” And soon you’re down the identity theft rabbit hole. Of course, those links are then posted as being from your account in order to lure your friends into clicking.
The takeaway from this story? We’ve heard it before: update your anti-virus software. Stay vigilant.
Also in this program, Twitter is getting a lot of credit for breaking the news of bin Laden’s death. But it’s Wikipedia who deserves your attention.
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