Latest Tech Scams

With the Christmas season officially upon us and budget not far away, people have become a lot more wary on how much they spend and can budget for the Christmas holidays. Unfortunately, there are many out there that realise the shoppers of today are conscious of spending too much and are always in search of a good deal or offer. Hackers and scammers have utilised this need for a good bargain and have exploited it for their own gain. There are various types of scam marketing out there ranging from the non tech use of flyers and junk mail post to invading your inbox with emails promoting great offers if you act now. It can be hard sometimes to distinguish the scam from the genuine offer and lately it has become all the more harder to do when scammers have learned to pose themselves as reputable companies.

Just recently, O2 have had a major problem on the scam front when various customers received texts from strange mobile numbers claiming to be O2 offering a free upgrade to the user if they followed the link in the message. Message boards quickly filled with users querying as to whether or not the texts were genuine as the links appear to bring them to O2 pages. It was quickly confirmed by O2 that the messages were a scam allowing hackers to gain important data from users if they were to attempt to ‘upgrade’ there package with this fake offer. O2 were quick to get security measures in place and attempt to sever the hackers use of their network to promote this scam offer. However, many users, especially those who may be unaware that O2 would never text from a generic mobile number remain unaware of the potential risk that could be imposed if they fall for this latest scam. In circulating this article I hope to create awareness of this scam and help protect others from falling victim to this malicious use of text marketing.

Another example of offers gone wrong can be seen through the misuse of the Apple brand. For those who are familiar with Black Friday, they will know it is a great day to grab a good offer as American shops provide unbelievable post-Thanksgiving offers. However, scammers have learned that this is a great opportunity to catch users unawares and have sent various emails to people stating they have received various amounts of iTunes store credit as part of a Black Friday offer. Users are then prompted to open an attached file to receive their credit but are of course instead infected with various forms of malware resulting in possible damage or hacking of their computer system. Once again, various scammers have utilised the want of a good offer to prey on naive victims just wanting to get a good offer. The main question which arises from these various attacks is how to know an offer from a scam and the only real answer to this is to ask around and if you are at all suspicious or unsure then do not open, follow links or agree to anything before checking it out. The Christmas season is filled with great offers and bargains but to shop safe you have got to shop smart!