Wednesday 23 January 2019

Kaspersky Total Security Scam message

The following Scam Caution is not what one would expect on this site. However it emphasizes that many messages distributed on regular social media sites such as Whats App and Facebook encourage one to "forward to everyone you know".

Not recommended that you click on links on such messages or worse still you forward them to anyone.

Copied from Kasperspy Total Security:
Here’s what happens. You get a message from someone in your friend list about a ticket giveaway. If you head to the site, you might read about, say, 500 free tickets to mark Disneyland’s 110th anniversary. Nearly 300 have supposedly been snapped up, but 200 or so are still temptingly available.
What’s more, the page is brimming with comments, seemingly from other users falling over themselves to praise Disneyland and post pictures of their prized tickets.
The procedure for getting a free ticket is very simple. Complete a short survey (usually about 5 simple questions: Have you been to Disneyland before?, Are you 18 or over?, Do you like Disneyland?, etc.), and then share the message with your WhatsApp friends, for which a special button is handily provided on the site.
After that, you’re prompted to boldly click or tap the “Get Tickets” button. But, for some strange reason, the tickets are not forthcoming. Instead, you are likely to be redirected to another site, which sends you to a third, and from there to a fourth, and so on.
In the end, you might end up on a site offering some shady goods or services. In general, you will be redirected to a partner site, so that the owners of the fake Disneyland landing page can be paid for the traffic.
This scheme is now very common, and new fake pages pop up almost daily. WhatsApp or Facebook are used for sending messages, and users are complicit in distributing them when they click “Share” in the hope of getting a free ticket.
We have observed the spread of such messages supposedly from Disneyland, Legoland, Europa-Park, Air France, Singapore Airlines, and many others. The companies themselves, of course, have absolutely nothing to do with such pages — the fraudsters simply use famous brands to lure people onto their sites. However, regardless of which companies are exploited, the imitation websites all look similar, even the comment topics and faces of the comment makers are usually the same. Only the logos at the top of the page and certain minor details are different.
Redirecting traffic to partner sites is not the only monetisation scheme. You might instead be sent to a page where you are offered to subscribe to a dubious mailing list, or end up on a malicious website (see our post here), or you might be signed up to a mobile operator’s paid services, for which the malefactors earn a percentage. Some media reports state that when the user presses the “Get Tickets” button, an attempt is made to steal their personal data, but we were unable to reproduce this scenario.
In any case, even if you’re not threatened with losing money, personal data, or something else, never follow links in such messages.
You should also definitely not share them with friends or post them on Facebook —you’ll only be helping the scammers to profit. If you receive such a message from a friend on WhatsApp, or spot a link to a nonexistent ticket giveaway on Facebook, kindly inform the sender/poster that they are facilitating a scam.

  Solution read only, if you can't resist, and delete without clicking on ANY LINKS and do not forward to anyone.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

TRUE
It is irresponsible to forward any such messages!