CERT Warns of Swine Flu Scams
by Steve Cypher on Thursday, April 30th, 2009The current swine flue outbreak has given internet scammers another way to steal your money and your personal information.
Taking advantage of swine flu fears
Here at Auto Credit Express we see that internet scammers have once again proven that they have no shame for we see that earlier this week the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) issued a warning to consumers about email scams relating to Swine Flu.
The subject line of these emails typically contain a message that references the swine flu and direct recipients to either open an attachment of click on a link in order to obtain additional information.
Here is the warning from CERT:
Swine Flu Phishing Attacks and Email Scams
added April 27, 2009 at 03:04 pm | updated April 28, 2009 at 04:42 pm
US-CERT is aware of public reports of email scams circulating related to the Swine Flu. The attacks arrive via an unsolicited email message typically containing a subject line related to the Swine Flu. These email messages may contain a link or an attachment. If users click on this link or open the attachment, they may be directed to a phishing website or exposed to malicious code.
US-CERT encourages users to take the following measures to protect themselves:
* Do not follow unsolicited web links or attachments in email messages.
* Maintain up-to-date antivirus software.
* Refer to the Recognizing and Avoiding Email Scams (pdf) document for more information on avoiding email scams.
* Refer to the Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks document for more information on social engineering attacks.
UPDATE: Due to these potential phishing attacks and email scams, US-CERT encourages users to visit the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website for trusted information regarding the Swine Flu.
The Bottom Line
Remember to only rely on trusted sites, such as the CDC, for information regarding Swine Flu. According to MSN, the online security company F-Secure has also identified a large number of new swine flu domain names that have been registered in the last week. So be careful out there. The CDC web site address, by the way, is: www.cdc.gov/swineflu/key_facts.htm.
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