The London 2012 Olympics are in full-swing, but behind the celebrations, fraudulent websites offering tickets to the Opening Ceremony and Olympic events are being advertised on Facebook and across the internet. The fraudlent website was in fact a 'phishing' website that was created to steal personal information from innocent web users.
Phishing is attempting to acquire information (and sometimes, indirectly, money) such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
Users in Japan are also being targeted, with websites selling illegal TV cards, allowing the consumer to watch the Olympics for free was also discovered. The site in question, handled payments in an unsafe way, which could pose financial risks to users. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) published the following list of legitimate broadcasters that hold the right to show the games.
In addition, there have been more than 50 spammed mails have been discovered, all of them scams related to the 2012 London Olympics. One email claims to be a notification for an 'Olympic Email Lottery', with the user supposedly winning large sums of cash.
With the games not finishing until the 12th August, PC PAL urge web users to be on the look out for suspicious activity. The examples above look to be the beginning of the 'cybercriminal marathon' in taking advantage of unsuspecting followers.
Source: Trend Micro
