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It’s not just football fans around the world who are interested in the FIFA World Cup, which is kicking off in South Africa on Friday 11 June. The huge global interest in the event also attracts cybercriminals who see it as a major opportunity to make money by selling fake tickets, attracting football fans to drive-by download websites (websites which download malware without the users’ knowledge), and carrying out phishing attacks camouflaged with a World Cup theme. Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure, says, “I urge football fans everywhere to give cybercriminals the red card by refusing to be fooled by their dirty tricks. In addition to online vigilance against World Cup spam, scams and hoaxes, it’s also crucial to keep computers patched and up-to-date to avoid getting hit by drive-by downloads from dubious websites.” World Cup tickets are hot property at the moment and desperate fans looking for last minute bargains make an ideal target group for online fraudsters. Unfortunately, many of the seemingly attractive ticket deals offered outside the official World Cup website www.fifa.com are bogus and fans end up losing their money. A survey commissioned by F-Secure* conducted in Germany, Sweden and the UK asked how likely Internet users would be to click on a link promising information about cheap tickets for the World Cup. An average of 28% respondents in the three countries were tempted to some degree, with about 8% of respondents saying they would be very likely to click on the link. With World Cup fever taking over the planet, hundreds of millions of people are also visiting all kinds of websites that purport to give the latest results and breaking news from the tournament. In anticipation of all this web traffic, cybercriminals have been setting up bogus websites designed to appear near the top of search engine results for the World Cup, ready to infect visitors. Spam email about star player scandals, sensational South Africa scoops and World Cup tickets are also certain to multiply as the tournament gets under way. Football fans should also be on the look-out for phishing attacks disguised as competitions or surprise lottery wins that attempt to steal their credit card numbers, online banking details, personal passwords, and other confidential information. Mikko Hypponen’s top tips for staying safe online during the World Cup:
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