It has only been two months since the Beijing Olympics and athletes and sports fans have four more years before the next Olympics happens in London. Spammers are not waiting that long though, because even as early as now, the said 2012 global event is already being used in online scams.
Here’s a screenshot of a spammed email message that masquerades as a lottery notification:
Figure 1. Sample of London Olympics spam
The email message informs the recipient that s/he is the winner of the supposed weekly lottery. Now users may not have joined any Olympics-related promos, but the promised cash prize would be enough for some to believe that they’ve actually won.
To make the message convincing, spammers put not only an Olympic logo but a link to http://www.olympic.org as well; this is the official website of International Olympic Committee. The message also contains fake reference and batch numbers, and security codes.
Now to claim the cash prize, users are instructed to forward their winning details to a “claim agent” whose contact information – phone and fax numbers, and email addresses – are also shown in the message. This is the scam to get accurate personal data.
Users are advised to not trust these unsolicited and unexpected email messages, no matter how much money they promise. Users must also be cautious in trusting claim agents. It is only logical that lottery winners have to have joined the raffle first.
The Trend Micro Smart Protection Network already blocks the spammed email messages involved in this scamming operation.
Other Olympics scams:
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