Different Kinds of Internet Frauds Hit Consumers during September 2011, Reports GFI

According to a recent monthly report by GFI, phony Internet-storages offering inexpensive HP Touchpads, spam mails assuring an American green card, and SEO-poisoned URLs for Web-surfers performing online search on Yahoo and Bing have hit consumers in September 2011.

Senior Threat Researcher Chris Boyd (a.k.a. Paperghost) from GFI says that during September 2011, scammers and other cyber-criminals yet again proved that they could fast answer back high-profile incidences as also exploit the Internet-search operations of Web-surfers. Infosecurity-magazine.com published this on October 13, 2011.

Boyd further says that though a few of the above attacks seem extremely convincing, often end-users can steer away from becoming victimized via just entering the URL addresses manually inside their Web-browsers. This will make sure they're accessing authorized websites rather than depending only on web-links from social-networking websites or search engine returns. On authorized websites, it becomes possible for visitors to check if the special offers/claims made are genuine, as also take down applications straight from an authentic place, Boyd adds.

For instance, in September 2011, there was excess demand for HP Touchpads since retailers cut down selling prices towards clearing the stocks of tablet PCs that had become unsupported and non-continuing. Fraudsters attempted at taking advantage of this heightened demand via exploiting people who hunted the Web to obtain sale-offers.

The cyber-criminals enticed Web-surfers onto sites masqueraded as reputed retailers of online technology, with the latter bragging about low supplies of their products. If end-users showed interest, the sites told them to fill out an easy Internet survey apparently, promising them a cheap Touchpad in exchange. Often these types of surveys are designed for garnering e-mail ids and personal info, which make end-users vulnerable to e-mail junk and other malware.

Moreover, during September 2011, scams targeted Bing and Yahoo search engines wherein end-users, attempting at downloading Adobe, Skype, Firefox alternatively other well-known computer-applications, encountered web-links leading them onto sites ridden with malware.

Eventually in its October 2011 report, GFI cautions Internet-operators for remaining vigilant of Halloween-associated frauds alongside junk e-mails, malicious e-mail attachments as also fake video web-links on Twitter, Facebook and other social-networking websites, even web-links, which seemingly followers/friends send.

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» SPAMfighter News - 10/25/2011