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Internet Scams Increasing as Economy Stumbles

by Terrence O'Brien on February 2, 2009 at 06:05 AM


We've noted before the economic downturn has been a boon to online scammers. As more tech workers have lost their jobs, the pool of potential cyber criminals has been growing, as has the number of people out there willing to believe the e-mails promising virus protection, get-rich-quick schemes, and funny or pornographic videos circulating on the Web.

By mid September, there were 31,000 malicious programs making the Internet rounds. Trojans, worms, even good 'ol fashioned data mining schemes have really taken off following the collapse of the banking industry and the rest of the economy. The scams are being fed to victims via IM, e-mail, and even social networking services.

Hackers and criminals are becoming more sophisticated as well, hijacking banner ads and complete Web sites, using Flash to install malware, and redirecting users from legitimate pages to infected sites. Monster.com and MyCheckFree.com have both fallen victim recently attacks, and experts only expect the number of scams to increase during 2009.

So keep your guard up when online, and remember as easy as a life of theft may seem, crime -- even cyber crime -- doesn't pay. And now you know... and knowing is half the battle. [From: USA Today]

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Tags: crime, hacker, hackers, safety, scam, scams, security, virus

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