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Crooks make money out of breaking news on social media [Mumbai] [Times of India]
[July 29, 2014]

Crooks make money out of breaking news on social media [Mumbai] [Times of India]


(Times of India Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) MUMBAI: The 419 email scams promising to give pots of money in return for a small initial sum to that friendly Nigerian are passe. Now you have more luck conning people if you offer to show the "actual video" of rebels shooting down the Malaysian airplane MH17.



After a series of such posts popped up on his timeline, Mumbaiker Shreyas Deshmukh tweeted in exasperation: "Seeing a lot of people posting video link of #MH17 accident on Facebook. It's a spam!" READ ALSO: The link prompts users to first share the 'video' with friends. Before they realise that there isn't a video, the conmen get some of them to participate in a survey and walk away with their mobile phone numbers, only to flood them with unwanted calls and mails, says hoax-slayer.com.

Scams seem to go hand in hand with big news breaks of late. Those who head to social media for the latest update have to wade through posts and tweets that might've been placed there by a garden-variety spammer or an extremist.


READ ALSO: When the World Cup fever was raging a month ago, Islamic militia ISIS nearly hijacked the #WorldCup hashtag to spread stories and images of their violent attacks. Hashtags are words or phrases preceded by the hash # sign to identify messages on a topic. Soon, #ISIS itself became the target of porn bots trying to push their ware. The latest hashtag to be misused is #MH17.

"We've seen social media lures abusing tragedies hours after something happens," says Jansen Musico, threat researcher at Trend Micro, a global security software company. Last week, the company found that scammers were using #MH17 soon after the tragedy was reported. But criminals were not looking to benefit from page views alone but to also steal financial information from unsuspecting users. "We noted that the links are related to ZBOT and other malware (malicious software) servers. They expose users to malware," says Musico.

Phishing attacks like these results in monetary loss. The lifecycle of a cyber crime involves collecting personal information of a user, compromising his account and sending out posts or statuses to his friends. "You do it many times and it snowballs. Criminals turn these online credentials to money," says Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, professor and head of Cybersecurity Education and Research Centre at Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi.

As per a research paper, $520 million was lost worldwide from phishing attacks in 2011. Earlier, such attacks targeted email users but with the explosion in popularity of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Foursquare, criminals also use them, says the paper on automatic phishing detection by Anupama Aggarwal, Ashwin Rajadesingan and Kumaraguru. India, along with Brazil and the US, are regularly targetted.

With huge amounts of data swirling around, detection is tough. Meanwhile, remaining alert is the only way to go, says social media enthusiasts like Shreyas Deshmukh. "A year ago, I came across a video on FB and spammed all my friends. Now I am more careful while clicking on a link," he says.

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