As with every major event, cybercriminals aren’t idle at Easter either. Read about a few Easter-related scams security researchers have reported recently.
The Bulldog Estate is warning about a Farmville scam, which installs a rogue application into your Facebook profile that uses your facebook account as a means to spread a fake viral messages/ads across facebook.
An article on SpamFighter warns that security researchers have cautioned that black hat search engine optimization (BHSEO) attacks have already started poisoning search results related to Easter. The fake links were found while looking for Easter printable cards and most of them pointed to domains in the .pl zone. Further, BHSEO attacks have a method that results in artificial inflation of the PageRank of harmful websites, to push them on the first pages of search results for keywords related to the event that is being exploited.
It’s a busy season for anti-malware vendors. ESET Blog reports on rogue antimalware piggybacking on attention-catching events, such as Easter, global disasters or the Royal wedding…
… ZD Net reports about our colleagues from McAfee reporting on a currently ongoing event-based social engineering attack, aiming to trick users into clicking on a link found in a malicious email…
…while Symantec’s official blog has a story about spammers intending to make you their Easter Bunny.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Don’t open up any emails, including links and attachments, if you don’t recognise the email address or the sender’s name.
- Avoid questionable websites. Some may automatically download malicious software onto your computer.
- Keep your computer protected with the latest anti-virus and anti-spyware software, and remember to use a good firewall.
- If you think your computer has been infected, you may need to have the computer checked.
Well, having said all that, do have a happy Easter! 🙂
ESET Ireland 
Wise advice.And if anyone phones you telling you there is a problem in your computer, be very wary……..