Online shoppers and email users face heightened festive risks.
With the annual Christmas spending frenzy fast approaching, phishing is as usual on the rise, targeting inexperienced online shoppers stocking up on gifts and festive goodies. Spam rates, already high after a steady climb since the summer and wave after wave of W32/Stration worms, are expected to hit record levels with the annual winter increase, and now even Santa is getting in on the act.
A new address-gathering campaign spotted by spam watchers at
Sophos
is apparently posing as a service providing personalised letters from Santa, hoping to lure parents wanting to keep the kids happy into handing out personal details, or at least live email address confirmations via the unsubscribe option.
Users are, as usual, advised to ignore unsolicited emails, and exercise caution when shopping online. Details of the Santa spam spotted by
Sophos
are
here
.
Posted on 22 November 2006 by
Virus Bulletin
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