McAfee Releases its List of 12 Top Scams This Christmas

Security specialists at McAfee have released the company's list of twelve Internet scams discovered during the current holiday season when people are exchanging gifts and merry-making but malicious threats are waiting in cyber space to pounce on unsuspecting web surfers.

Charity phishing, which is first on the list, is exploiting people's urge for making donations during the holiday season. Fraudsters dispatch e-mails that look like they have arrived from charitable institutions. The second scam is e-mail spoofing banks as scammers send a formal looking e-mail asking recipients to verify their account information like username and password.

Third on the list is holiday e-cards scam that prompts for clicking on links. These links actually lead the user to a malware-hosting website where Trojan software could be downloaded.

Further, bogus invoices are the fourth type of scam and a popular one during holidays. In this scam, fraudsters try to seize personal financial information through phony invoices attached to a message that typically informs of failed delivery of a certain parcel.

The fifth frequent scam the security company has named relates to exploiting social networking websites. In this, users are presented with 'new friend' notices that too result in downloading of malicious software

The sixth vacation scam relates to Christmas-related search phrases such as 'free Christmas screensaver', 'free Santa download' and similar keywords that lead to downloading of malware like potentially unwanted programs, adware, or even worse, spyware.

The seventh scam relates to problems with surfing on the Internet at the local cafes or coffee shops. Most users are not aware of the risks of wireless networks that are not secured. Computer hackers can see the websites that users are browsing, passwords being used as well as the bank accounts being accessed.

The eighth and ninth scams relate to password stealing software and frauds on auction sites respectively. And the holiday-related e-mail attachments, online ID thefts and laptop thefts make for the tenth, eleventh and twelfth top scams respectively. A new McAfee holiday survey discovered that 49% of e-mail users have opened or tend to open e-mails carrying attachment on a holiday topic.

Related article: McAfee Alerts Windows about Accessibility Hole in Vista

» SPAMfighter News - 1/9/2009