News regarding the recent birth of Prince George Alexander Louis, third in line to the British throne, is being exploited by a range of online scammers.
As popular news breaks across the media there are always online scammers looking to take advantage and the news of the royal birth is certainly no exception.
Breaking news stories that garner international public interest provide effective bait for Internet scammers that can help them execute a range of different Internet scams.
One classic trap is inevitably making both the email and social media rounds promising to show exclusive videos of the baby. However these messages link to external websites that attempt to install malware or rogue browse extensions onto your computer by asserting you need a “plugin”, “codec” or “update” to your video player in order to watch the video.
Once victims are fooled into installing the fake update they will find their email and social media accounts posting links to the same message to their online contacts.
Other scams may lure victims into completing surveys which harvest their personal information which in turn leads to spam. Phishing attacks may link back to a site that looks like Facebook that asks for your account name and password which are then stolen once entered.
As always with breaking news always obtain your information from reliable news outlets and treat email and social media links to untrusted sites with extreme caution.
If you do fall foul to a malware scam, remember to complete a full antivirus scan on your computer with up-to-date reliable security software. If you’re looking to install or update your security software for 2015 click here for our editor’s choice recommendations.
