Online Scams to Surge during the Festive Season

Recently, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mobile Media Unlimited Holdings Inc, Enable Software Ltd. cautioned businesses against the foreseen augment in the volume of spam and phishing e-mails all through the festive season.

According to the firm, one of the main risks include phishing e-mails that offer users credit on festive shopping and then ask for personal and financial information in the application process to compromise the identity of the user.

During the Christmas time of 2008 and 2009, Enable Software observed an augmentation of 400% of spam e-mails sent during the festive season. Besides, the firm highlighted that several new machines received at the Christmas time did not have anti-virus software installed and frequently becomes hubs for circulating spam to innocent netizens.

Commenting on the issue, Chief Executive Officer at Enable Software, Danny Jenkins, stated that, it is very significant for businesses and organizations to understand the risk value during the festive season and to be extra alert, while sending and receiving gifts as there are various fake applications that may infect users' computer, as reported by MarketWire on December 3, 2010.

Disturbingly, similar to Enable Software, security vendor ESET has also alerted netizens regarding fake scams that especially crop up during the Christmas season.

ESET noted that one prominent scam that occurs during this season is Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (BHSEO) scams, which redirects users to malicious websites that infect users' computers with viruses and other types of malware.

According to the firm, fake scams related to Christmas are increasingly becoming more and more sophisticated with the passage of time. The security firm further stated that, with the help of such malware attacks, cybercriminals steal personal and financial information of users' and ultimately generate monetary profits.

One more scam that ESET noted was the one that target on charities as cybercrooks are aware of the fact that people wish to donate during this season.

Urban Schrott of ESET cautioned donators by commenting that, they definitely don't want to discourage the practice of donations and charity, but they want to alert people that they should only trust reputed organizations for the purpose of charity, for example, people can check the authenticity of a charitable trust from the checklist by The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, as reported by Irishdev on December 6, 2010.

Related article: Online Card Fraud Shows Greater Tendency Than Chip and Pin

» SPAMfighter News - 12/18/2010