Along with this week’s Malware Report, things are really humming with cybercrime. As we’ve been preaching for over ten years, people really need to be careful — and help squash online crime! If they don’t, it will be bad for all of us. Just a few in this week’s cache
* Sophos Pulls Partner Portal After Signs of Hacking
* How to avoid revocable living trust cons and scams
* Humor: Jon Stewart compares Obama to Nigerian spammer
* Inside Twitter’s Spam Lawsuit: Cost More Than $700000
* WordPress Users : Hacked and mangled — yet again
* At Long Last, Twitter Files Anti-Spam Lawsuits
* New Crimes Added to Russian Criminal Code
* Minimize Your Exposure to Email Spoofing
* AVMA issues email fraud alert
* Tax Season Ushers In Scams
and more . . .
Sophos Pulls Partner Portal After Signs of Hacking
Security firm Sophos has taken its partner portal offline and will reset every user’s password after it found signs of a potential security breach on the server hosting it.
“Two unauthorized programs were found on the server, and our preliminary investigations indicate that these were designed to allow unauthorized remote access to information,” Sophos said in a security alert posted on its website.
Full story : PCWorld
AVMA issues email fraud alert
A suspicious email is spreading in the American Veterinary Medical Association’s (AVMA) name, and officials want the group’s 82,000-plus members to know that if they receive an email from the domain Veterinary_Practice_Center@mail.vresp.com, ‘it’s not from us.’
The suspected phishing email is from Veterinary Practice Resource Center, which invites veterinarians to sign up for an ‘AVMA PURE CONTENT Free Webinar.’ Full story : VIN News Service
Tax Season Ushers In Scams
With taxes due April 17, most of us procrastinators will be spending the next week or so getting the necessary paperwork in order to file. But tax season also is scam season for scam artists looking to get at your personal information.
Clinton Raines, owner/agent of the State Farm insuance agency in East Atlanta, offers these tax-scamming tips for consumers to protect themselves Full story : Patch.com
How to avoid revocable living trust cons and other tax scams
‘Dirty Dozen Tax Scams’ is an annual list published by the IRS, warning taxpayers that illegal schemes and scams will lead to significant penalties, and even criminal prosecution. Topping this year’s list is identity theft, whereby scammers look for ways to use a legitimate taxpayer’s identity and personal information to file a tax return and claim a fraudulent refund.
Other scams on the list include phishing ‘ fake Web sites or unsolicited e-mails asking gullible taxpayers to provide their Social Security number and their bank information because they have purportedly won such prizes as the Irish Sweepstakes. Full story : Washington Post
New Crimes Added to Russian Criminal Code
The Supreme Court yesterday approved amendments to the criminal legislation to formalize some types of crime in separate articles, in particular loan, social benefit and insurance frauds, embezzlement of investors’ funds and counterfeit credit card fraud, as well as phishing, an e-mail fraud scam designed to get unsuspecting users to reveal sensitive information such as passwords and pin codes.
The document, part of Dmitry Medvedev’s policy of liberalizing the Criminal Code, is to be forwarded to the lower house of parliament in the near future. The Supreme Court paid particular attention to Article 159 on fraud. Full story : RIA Novosti
At Long Last, Twitter Files Anti-Spam Lawsuits
Since the microblogging service exploded in popularity just a few short years ago, Twitter’s most egregious problem has been spam. Type ‘iPad’ in a tweet, and expect a deluge of twitterbots @replying you with fake offers of $99 discount tablets.
Twitter took a new step in its fight against spammers on Thursday, filing a lawsuit in a San Francisco federal court against companies that create tools to automate posting to and following people on Twitter. Full story : Wired News Also see: Twitter fights spammers in new lawsuit, implements additional anti-spamming – www.theverge.com
Minimize Your Exposure to Email Spoofing
Did someone really hijack your email address to mass-mail spam messages? Not necessarily. Here’s what might have happened.
Your mother calls you to ask why you keep emailing her about “enhancements,” and your coworkers complain that you won’t stop sending them ads. Does this sound like you? Full story : PCWorld (blog)
Humor: Jon Stewart compares Obama to Nigerian spammer
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart lit into President Obama for his campaign’s overuse of fundraising email solicitation’s last night. “Seriously, there are exiled Nigerian princes getting Obama campaign emails going, ‘Ease up on the money thing fella,’” Stewart joked.
Once expected to raise more than $1 billion for the 2012 campaign, Obama has repeatedly failed to match even his 2008 fundraising pace. Obama and Democrats reported raising $29 million combined in January, down from $36 million raised in the same month four years ago. Full story : NewsOK.com
Inside Twitter’s Spam Lawsuit: Fighting Five Defendants Cost More Than $700000
Twitter’s costs in fighting the spam created by five defendants it’s suing are more than $700,000 – and that may be a conservative underestimate.
The company is seeking full restitution of those costs and other damages, along with an injunction forcing each defendant to stop its activities, as it seeks a jury trial in a San Francisco federal court. Full story : Marketing Land
WordPress Users : Hacked and mangled — yet again
Dan Tynan at IT World writes :
For the second time in two years my WordPress site was hacked, this time by Viagra spammers. Here are a few of the hard lessons I learned. Full story : ITworld.com
What did you miss in the last Safenetting post Send in your items for Safenetting readers
Facebook Safe Netting Join / Like / contribute : UGNN FaceBook Group, (ug.netnews)
If you think you’re a victim, file a complaint with the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center : IC3.
You can also keep up with the efforts to curb spam and cybercrime by reading the news at Knujon and HostExploit.com. And, you should switch to SpamCop and take a stand against spam.
