Sigh, we are at it again! Yes, just a few weeks before the Olympic Games in London spammers have amplified their efforts to lure your money away or even feed your beloved computer with malware. Olympic Games 2012 spam is here!
This is not just another “crying wolf” warning against the lures of the Internet and spammers taking advantage of the excitement of another edition of the Olympic Games. So, yes, spammers are going for the gold and to prove our point we took a peak into our backend database of spam mails and did some simple searches for “Olympic games”, “London 2012 tickets” etc… Here are a few of our findings:
1. This is an example of the traditionel fake ticket scam:
At first sight it seems legitimate but upon taking a closer look things become more evident. Spelling errors and mediocre customer support are obvious qualities of spam mails. Buying tickets to large scale events should always be done at official sites and in this case the olympic games in London actually have a nice list of websites selling “un-authorized tickets”. You can see the list here.
2. Contest winner scam
Lets not forget about one of the oldest tricks by scammers. The recipient is notified that they won a large sum of money with details in an attachment. Open the attachment and a nasty piece of malware will be the magic event this summer – not the Olympic Games I am afraid! Here are two examples. The first is a typical Lottery scam, while the other piggybacks on the Coco-Cola brand. Will the latter trick anyone? Hopefully not.
3. The Olympic phishing scam.
The final scam is a bit more phishy. You are asked to contact a board member of the Olympics who will likely want your phone number and a lot of other private stuff you would rather keep to yourself. Here is an example:
There are definately more out there than the few we provided above. In addition to our software security solutions, we can also offer some general advice for handling Olympic Games 2012 spam and malware. As mentioned, stay clear of any websites that are not affiliated with the official London 2012 event and, as always, be wary of suspicious offers that land in your mail box or that you stumple upon in social networks and websites! Over and out.
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