Olympic Games the new hotspot for cybercriminals
Hyderabad: While the Tokyo Olympics is happening with all kinds of safety measures in place, cybercriminals are using this opportunity to take advantage of fans’ eagerness and instigating various online fraud schemes.
An analysis by Kaspersky experts found fake pages offering to stream various Olympic events, selling tickets for competitions that will not have spectators; giveaways and even the first fake Olympic Games virtual currency are doing rounds. Here is a list of possible online frauds happening in the name of Olympic Games.
Live Streams
With more spectators moving from stadiums to online, Kaspersky experts found various phishing pages offering to stream the Olympic Games. Some of them ask for people to register before watching. Usually in such phishing pages, once a user enters their credentials, they might be redirected to a page that distributes different malicious files. Besides having malware installed on their device, users send their identifying information to untrustworthy hands. After that, scammers may start using such data for bad purposes or sell it on the Dark Web.
Fake Tickets
Despite there being no events held with spectators in person this year, fraudsters are not shying away from trying well-tested fraud attempts, like selling offline event tickets. Experts also discovered pages offering refunds for already purchased tickets.
Olympic-related entities
Analyzing discovered pages, experts also found examples of phishing pages disguised as official Olympic ones such as a page pretending to be an official website for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and a page mimicking the International Olympic Committee.
Gifts
No big public event is complete without fraudsters imitating extremely generous giveaways. Experts found phishing pages offering to win a TV, ideal to watch the Olympic Games on. This is quite popular and, usually, each user becomes a lucky winner; the chosen ones only need to pay a delivery fee.
Olympic Games token
Researchers found the first ever virtual currency, which is a support fund for Olympic athletes. If a user buys the token, the scammers offer to support financially talented sportsmen around the world who are in need.
How to protect yourself?
Check the link before clicking. Hover over it to preview the URL and look for misspelling or other irregularities.
Check the authenticity of websites before entering personal data and only use official webpages to watch the Olympic Games.
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