Thanksgiving scams: Warming up for Christmas

Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between legitimate online offers and malicious spam. In this day and age, you can be pretty sure that financial and government institutions won’t send you emails asking you to change your account details.

But, sometimes the only thing preventing you to fall prey to cyber crooks that use fake promotional discounts and other special offers online to lure you into giving up your personal information is – your memory. Do you remember having subscribed to those offers and promotions? If you can’t remember, delete the email – no matter how tempting the offer sounds.

Holidays are usually a time of great activity for scammers, especially holidays that involve gift-giving. Trend Labs received a lot of spam samples that took advantage of Thanksgiving. Some of them were fishing for an email address so they can spam you extensively. Some of them were just plain phishing:

Remember this – for Thanksgiving and every other major holiday:

• If the offer sound too good to be true, it probably is
• Legitimate offers are sent only to those who subscribed to them
• Don’t follow links you find in emails you’re not sure you requested
• Use protective software.