In this hyper-connected world, even if you were thousands of miles from Boston, you were impacted by the blast of vicious bombs at this week’s Boston Marathon attack. Many of us were riveted by television coverage or online reporting of the terrible tragedy. Undoubtedly, some of you may have already received malicious spam emails that started flooding global inboxes, and malicious links appearing in your social networks. Be cautious and be careful about what you open, link, promote or click on! (In the case of the malware-laden emails we’ve seen, you can be sure your Norton and Symantec products will protect you!)
We’ve seen this disgusting phase in cybercrime repeated with almost every natural and man-made disaster or tragedy over the past several years. Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, earthquakes and tsunamis all generate an aftermath of cybercrime. The crooks want you to make your charitable donations on a fake website or via a malicious SMS (mobile text) campaign, or they want to tempt you into viewing exclusive images or footage that doesn’t really exist. In many of these cases, you might click through and inadvertently download malware, or think you are logging in again to your social network, but instead it’s a phishing scam that provides a crook with your username and password to leverage against you.
Be cautious and aware of the tendency for cybercrime and scams to trail high-profile tragedies. Please be generous towards the victims and the first-responder agencies that swarm to assist the wounded and harmed; just choose your charity with care. Make sure you type the name of the website yourself; don’t follow a link. Stick with well known and time-tested charities or visit Charity Navigator to investigate any you wish to support. Any SMS messages you receive from unknown senders should be viewed as highly suspicious and you should never reply unless you are sure you know they are legitimate.
See also:
CNN story: http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/17/pf/boston-marathon-charity/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
and Mashable: http://mashable.com/2013/04/17/boston-bombings-malware/
http://community.norton.com/t5/Ask-Marian/Japan-Earthquake-Charity-Scams-Abound/ba-p/414888