The singer Michael Jackson, who died in late June, is the celebrity that has generated the most spam is sent, before Serena Williams and Patrick Swayze, as the editor of IT security solutions Symantec announced Monday that its classification of Internet attacks for 2009 .. Overall, American society has identified more than 40 trillion spam messages during the last 12 months.
The announcement of the death of “King of Pop” was immediately followed by a massive spam emails disguised as proposed for example new information on the artist’s death or a link to videos of the singer.
“Online criminals knew that the death of the singer would interest many people, that this news would be an ideal way to capture the attention of Internet users, thereby increasing the opening of fraudulent emails or push click on links harmful, “Symantec said in its report.
Top 5 “toxic celebrities in 2009 is supplemented by tennis player Serena Williams, the recently deceased actor Patrick Swayze, the character Harry Potter, and the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama. In all cases, scammers have used these names to broadcast messages urging users to click on malicious links.
Symantec, which has seen more than 40 trillion spam (or 40 billion billion) over the last twelve months (or 5,000 spams per person in the world today), has also established its classification of Internet threats’ year. Verse Conficker tops, before the virus W32.Dozer. An attack exploiting the death of Michael Jackson on “Who Killed Michael Jackson” is also part of this ranking.
For 2010, Symantec warns users against fraud on social networking, downloads of fake antivirus, viruses developed for Mac computers and smartphones, or phishing attacks disguised via URLs on Twitter.