McAfee Cautions about Vacation Scams

McAfee has cautioned purchasers on the Internet for being vigilant of scams during the current holiday time, published itp.net dated November 9, 2011.

Director Gary Davis in-charge of Kaspersky's Consumer Product Marketing stated that cyber-crooks felt very happy when holidays approached. Itp.net reported this.

Davis further said that consumers were preparing for travels, making purchases of gifts, and browsing Facebook to contact friends after updating their profiles. But, for the maximum number of Internet-users, their tablets or smart-phones had no security safeguard in spite of utilizing them greatly in the vacation time. Thus, consumers required being cleverer than the crooks during the current vacation and maintaining security of their online-connected computers. For, they could be in danger of attacks by such crooks stealing their financial and other personal details, Davis explained.

Consequently, McAfee outlined a few key malware and Internet scams, which Internet users must remain careful of as the vacations approached.

First fake anti-viruses called scareware could be in distribution. Fake anti-viruses reportedly, deceive users into thinking their PCs are endangered alternatively the systems are already infected, so they acquiesce for paying for such false security programs. Indeed, these programs are very common as also risky online threats during the present time, with some 1m victims getting trapped daily. During October 2010, McAfee said that scareware accounted for 23% of all risky web-links, while it had reappeared over the recent months.

Secondly, cyber-criminals also distribute screensavers during the holidays. Thus, McAfee urges users for decorating their PCs in another way, with Christmas-related screensavers getting disseminated which are in reality malicious software. A recent online-hunt to get a Santa-painted screensaver, which pledges for providing a 3D movie and an experience of a flight with Santa, is actually malevolent. Thirdly, there are phony electronic greeting cards that users require being wary of.

One more relatively fresh e-threat on McAfee's malware list is that which targets Macs.

Essentially according to Davis, the increasingly-acceptable Apple software for personal or business utilization had prompted online-crooks to design one fresh surge of malicious software that aimed straight at Mac users. Pcworld.com published this on November 9, 2011.

Related article: McAfee Alerts Windows about Accessibility Hole in Vista

» SPAMfighter News - 11/16/2011