Jaropa Tech Limited
Scam Awareness Month
February 2010 is Scam Awareness Month, a campaign run by the UK Office of Fair Trading.
It co-incides with information from Sophos that
attacks aimed at users of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have increased by 70% in the past year.
The reason is simple: more and more people are using such sites without giving enough thought to what personal information they reveal.
The OFT's research indicates that £3.5 billion is lost to scams every year, affecting around three million people in the UK.
Scams range from downloading Malware onto the victim's computer and capturing sensitive information such as credit card numbers, to
bogus emails that request login credentials for online banking websites and so on. Unfortunately, many people innocently respond to these emails
and provide the requested information. Legitimate emails from genuine banks, building societies and other online services will never ask for
such information.
Find out more
Go to the Scams page of the Office of Fair Trading website.
Read the Security Threat Report: 2010 from Sophos.
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