With the arrival of the holidays, themed scams are multiplying online. And Halloween doesn't cut corners either. The holiday, much loved throughout the world, also coincides with the start of the Christmas shopping season. And the traps for unsuspecting web surfers are often hidden behind "trap" emails, with fake links or payment requests. The alert was launched by the security company Bitdefender.
The magic word that cybercriminals use to attract users is "freebie". In fact, almost 27% of the scam messages analyzed by researchers inform the recipient that they are about to receive a free gift or can participate in a survey to win gadgets or household items. «The cybercriminals behind these fraudulent spam campaigns also impersonate large retail brands such as Walmart, Amazon or airlines such as Southwest - experts observe -. The campaigns typically promise fake rewards for completing a survey, including, for example, Amazon Fire HD tablets, Dell laptops and kitchen sets up to $500 worth of flight vouchers. Recipients are only asked to pay a shipping fee of a few dollars for the gifts they choose . In France, however, the most widespread scam promises to give away an iPhone 15 for Halloween. With the sole aim of defrauding users, we have also identified a spam campaign that offers the purchase of clothing or sweets."
But Halloween-themed spam is nothing new in recent days: Bitdefender began detecting it as early as September 20th, with significant peaks starting from October 7th. The spam campaigns detected currently originate from Malaysia (36%), the United States (33%) and Germany (13%). The geographically most affected areas are the United States with 69% of spam, followed by Ireland (9%), Sweden (5%) and Germany (3%). But the forecasts are for a rapid and widespread diffusion, especially in Europe.
(Unioneonline/vf)
