Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Norton warns of 'celeb email' scam

Online security company Norton is warning that a new round of scam emails are being circulated with the aim of infecting people's computers. The emails claim that a big name celebrity has died in a car crash.

Other e-mails claim that a celebrity has died in a plane crash alongside all of the other passengers.

Scammers know that this kind of subject line is tempting and they hope to get its recipients to click on the attachment to find out more. The virus can also infect computers through HTML code. Both the code and the attachments carry Malware.

One of these viruses is the Trojan.Zbot. This virus can compromise the security of a computer and steal bank details along with other personal information. The virus can also been changed by criminals to gather whatever information it is that they require.

“This is a new variation on an old trick. Scammers know what makes us tick. Like old-school con men, they’re basically masters of human nature. By offering people something titillating, or shocking, they’re hoping to bypass our learned defenses in order to get us to do something in the spur of the moment that we may ordinarily think twice about. These approaches work well on young people who, having grown up on a steady diet of online gossip, always want to be the first to know.”

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