Well, this did not take long. LiveScience.com is reporting that only hours after the Boston Marathon terror bombing, spammers were hard at working creating spam messages with links promising access to more information which were in fact opportunities to download viruses and Trojans onto unsuspecting users.
See the full story here http://news.yahoo.com/boston-bombings-used-malware-scam-bait-211508257.html.
Over the years, we have watched the various “Nigerian Scams” seeking your checking account, and seen them morph from various princesses promising millions to missionaries to American soldiers with hidden caches of riches. Some of these messages can be pretty sophisticated and recent advances using analytics can even customize messages specifically for you.
Last winter, I received a message from the “Oregon University” to click on a link for information about a conference that I supposedly asked for. The clue was “Oregon University” and not “University of Oregon”. I researched the link and saw that it sent me to a server with a Russian domain.
Yet, even these seem pretty obvious and if I sat down 100 people and asked each of them to give me their checking account in exchange for the promise of riches, all would say no. And still, FBI Cyber Security agents tell us that most victims of these various scams are in for about $70,000 before they come forward with a complaint.
And, one would think that intelligent, highly educated people could *never* be conned into such an obvious scheme. Right? Well, perhaps not. Check out this recent discovery from the University of Puerto Rico http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/university-of-puerto-rico-president-victim-of-scam-school-loses-150000/23322/.
Bottom line: we must all be vigilant because we can all be fooled.
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