World Cup Spam on the Rise, F-Secure Announces
According to F-Secure, Finland-based company that specializes in providing antivirus and security software solutions, there has been an increase of spam messages related to the upcoming Fifa 2010 World Cup. As F-Secure explained the levels of World Cup spam are under 2% compared to the overall spam traffic, which isn’t that much. But it is a lot more than the World Cup spam traffic the company has seen for the past 6 months.
“It's still just a small percentage of spam overall (under 2%) but when comparing the first three days from the last six months, we see a doubling in volume and 74 times the number of hits on related keywords from January to June. As the tournament continues from June to July 11th, we expect to see more related threats,” explained F-Secure.
Here’s a visual representation of the rise of World Cup spam, as presented by F-Secure.
Now the fact that World Cup spam is on the rise is not exactly something we weren’t expecting. Take a page from the spammer’s manual (if there is such a thing) and it would go something like this: if an important or high profile event takes place, use it as a means to propagate spam and trick unwary computer users. If there is no high profile event to take advantage off, make something up and use that – like, proclaiming that Johnny Depp died.
If you receive a spam message that claims to contain some important info about the World Cup, it is best to just ignore it. It is best to ignore any unsolicited message as a matter of fact. You never know if that spam message leads to a phishing site for example, or if it has some malware attached to it.
If you want to get the latest World Cup scores then I suggest you give the FootieFox Firefox add-on a shot. If you want to get the latest World Cup news, get them from trustworthy sources – like the official Fifa 2010 World Cup site.
“It's still just a small percentage of spam overall (under 2%) but when comparing the first three days from the last six months, we see a doubling in volume and 74 times the number of hits on related keywords from January to June. As the tournament continues from June to July 11th, we expect to see more related threats,” explained F-Secure.
Here’s a visual representation of the rise of World Cup spam, as presented by F-Secure.
Now the fact that World Cup spam is on the rise is not exactly something we weren’t expecting. Take a page from the spammer’s manual (if there is such a thing) and it would go something like this: if an important or high profile event takes place, use it as a means to propagate spam and trick unwary computer users. If there is no high profile event to take advantage off, make something up and use that – like, proclaiming that Johnny Depp died.
If you receive a spam message that claims to contain some important info about the World Cup, it is best to just ignore it. It is best to ignore any unsolicited message as a matter of fact. You never know if that spam message leads to a phishing site for example, or if it has some malware attached to it.
If you want to get the latest World Cup scores then I suggest you give the FootieFox Firefox add-on a shot. If you want to get the latest World Cup news, get them from trustworthy sources – like the official Fifa 2010 World Cup site.
