Ashley Madison hack triggers a spate of scamming cases, With the recent Ashley Madison breach seeing hundreds of thousands of its user’s login details being let out into the open, scammers have moved swiftly to capitalize on the event, and on unmindful Internet users.
According to Symantec, there has been a significant a spike in scam email campaigns mentioning the infidelity website. Immediately following the leak of the site’s registered customer database on 18 August, there was an upsurge in scamming activity surrounding the breach. Case in point, since the very next day, Symantec’s filters have purportedly blocked thousands of domains relating to Ashley Madison in the ‘From’ and ‘To’ fields in user emails. The screenshot above is an example of a scam mail around the Ashley Madison hack (source: Symantec.)
From August 22 onwards, additional scam campaigns have been blocked that contain references to the website in the email’s subject line. Blocked subject lines include the likes of “How to check if your email is part of Ashley Madison’s hack”, “Ashley Madison Hack Should Scare You”, “Ashley Madison hacked, is your spouse cheating” and more.While the website, with the nature of its services being what it is, has always been a target for scammers, the sharp spike in interest around it post the hack is notable from the graph above. Seen above is the number of scam campaigns blocked by Symantec with a mention of Ashley Madison since the start of June.
So what can end users do about this? As with any unknown email, users should exercise all the necessary caution and avoid clicking on any links, making cash transfers or providing any personal details in response to the contents of an email. No matter how noble or sincere the tone and subject of the email, any solicitation of information from an unknown source should be considered with extreme caution. If there exists the slightest of doubts about the intentions of the sender, commit the mail to junk.
According to Symantec, there has been a significant a spike in scam email campaigns mentioning the infidelity website. Immediately following the leak of the site’s registered customer database on 18 August, there was an upsurge in scamming activity surrounding the breach. Case in point, since the very next day, Symantec’s filters have purportedly blocked thousands of domains relating to Ashley Madison in the ‘From’ and ‘To’ fields in user emails. The screenshot above is an example of a scam mail around the Ashley Madison hack (source: Symantec.)
From August 22 onwards, additional scam campaigns have been blocked that contain references to the website in the email’s subject line. Blocked subject lines include the likes of “How to check if your email is part of Ashley Madison’s hack”, “Ashley Madison Hack Should Scare You”, “Ashley Madison hacked, is your spouse cheating” and more.While the website, with the nature of its services being what it is, has always been a target for scammers, the sharp spike in interest around it post the hack is notable from the graph above. Seen above is the number of scam campaigns blocked by Symantec with a mention of Ashley Madison since the start of June.
So what can end users do about this? As with any unknown email, users should exercise all the necessary caution and avoid clicking on any links, making cash transfers or providing any personal details in response to the contents of an email. No matter how noble or sincere the tone and subject of the email, any solicitation of information from an unknown source should be considered with extreme caution. If there exists the slightest of doubts about the intentions of the sender, commit the mail to junk.
Blogger Comment
Facebook Comment