SCARS™ Scam Alert: A New Kind Of Socially Engineered Scam

A New Kind Of Scam Is Appearing Thanks To Google Searches …

You are minding your own business searching Google or Bing for left-handed kumquats or spring-tailed dandy-lions and you see a link to an interesting website link in the search results.

You click on the link and it immediately redirects you to something else. A different website or page. If you have a good anti-malware application running it will block the malware that might have been downloaded by visiting this webpage. If you don’t let’s hope you have the wrong kind of phone or tablet – because YOU KNOW you should be using antivirus or antimalware software right?

This Is What Is Popping Up On An Unknown Number Of Websites After The Redirect (See Image)

Screen Capture of Scam Webpage

It has animations and speaks to how you are the 5 billionth person to search today, this week, whatever. It looks well designed – it shows other winners and how much they won!

But Like All Such Things, It Is A Socially Well-Engineered Scam

Was the original website a purposefully designed lure or honey pot, or was it one of the 60% of websites that have been hacked? Either way, it was a targeted weapon guided towards YOU. We all fall for this type of trap – since it is a linked website that fell within what you were looking for – it was natural that you would click on it. Once you did, they owned you – unless you had protection and recognized it for the trap it obviously was.

This is a perfect example of a well-crafted socially engineered scam. It is unavoidable. If gives no hint of its existence in advance.

The only protection is having the right software – such as Malwarebytes (what we use) and the scam avoidance discipline to STOP dead in your tracks, THINK about your next action, THEN ACT appropriately.

We rely on Google to screen for such traps, but clearly, all of the big tech companies have abandoned their responsibility. But each of us can learn to change our behaviors to prevent an accidental trap being turned into a catastrophe – yet over 98% of online users do not learn the basics. And this goes for companies whose IT department tries to teach something they poorly understand to their workforce.

It takes experts in social engineering scams to help get your people to stop doing the wrong things.

If you are looking for the right people, contact us, we will be happy to share who is the best in the world at social engineering countermeasures because they work with literally millions of the victims of social engineering (hint – it is the US|GCP Division of SCARS at www.USGCP.com).

But, feel free to ignore the warning. Millions of people do every day. And it is for this reason that cybercrime will grow to exceed US$6 Trillion Dollars by the end of 2021 (per McAfee).

We wish you all the best of luck!

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SCARS™ Team
A SCARS Division
Miami Florida U.S.A.

TAGS: SCARS, Important Article, Information About Scams, Anti-Scam, Socially Engineered Cybercrime, Socially Engineered Scam, Scam Alert, New Kind Of Socially Engineered Scam, Cybercrime Prevention

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