Popular celebrity news stories lead to increase in malware attacks

The amount of celebrity deaths in the past ten days, losing icons like Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and Ed McMahon, has been surprising and sad, especially if you believe in the death comes in three’s superstition. What is even more surprising to me is how quickly cybercriminals use the deaths of celebs or latest big news story as a way to lure you into potentially downloading malware onto your computer.

McAfee’s Avert Labs sent out an alert this week reminding everyone to be extra vigilant in light of recent events. In this blog (http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2009/06/25/) they remind us to be careful of spam emails that offer links to news or photos. “When the users click on the fake links, they are susceptible to any kind of attack, spyware or malware installation, or information theft” the blog says.

This is a great time to remind kids about the danger lurking in their email inbox and also when they do a search. If they do not know who an email is from, they should just delete it without opening it. Many dangers on the net are financially motivated and the criminals will do anything, including spreading false emails or links boasting false information surrounding news events in order to gain access to your credit card number or personal information. Unfortunately, kids are sometimes the ones to open the “door” to criminals, letting them into your computer.

Not all sites are created equal and neither are all emails. A free product like Site Advisor can help you know the difference. Download it and teach your kids how to use it. Kids are curious and even if they don’t know who an email is from, they may want to open it anyway because it has a subject line that gets their attention. Criminals prey on our curiosity. So best arm yourself and your kids to back out of a potentially harmful mistake before your information is stolen or a virus is downloaded.

I subscribe to Google alerts and occasionally one of the links that is returned in the search is to a site that contains malware. A big McAfee Site Advisor alert shows at the top of the email warning me about the dangerous site and what the site could potentially do. Site Advisor, while it is not an antivirus product can help make you aware when an email contains a link to a bad site or a harmful site comes up in a search. It really is nice knowing about the danger before I inadvertently click or before the kids do a search for “free lyrics”!