The final movie of the Harry Potter novel series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2”, is attracting a lot of attention prior to its global release this weekend.
However, it is not only fans who are jumping on the hype bandwagon, but spammers too.
Security company Symantec reports that spammers are offering free tickets to the film via e-mail.
The e-mail header shows an example of header spoofing, whereby the e-mail purports to originate from the official Harry Potter site.
This is not the first time Harry Potter has been a vehicle for spam. Symantec says it has observed spam promoting the Harry Potter novels and accessories at discounted rates, as well as 419 and online pharmacy scams invoking Harry Potter.
“The goal of these spam campaigns is to harvest personal and financial information,” says Symantec.
“Because Harry Potter fans are excited to find out what will happen in the final instalment, we expect that spammers will continue to distribute more and more Harry Potter spam leading up to the final film's release since this is their last great chance to exploit the Harry Potter magic.”
Norton advises Harry Potter fans to be on high alert and avoid opening e-mails from unknown senders, or clicking on shortened links posted on social networks.
Video threat
Another scam doing the rounds capitalises on the interest in Facebook's new Skype-powered video chat service, Video Calling.
Scammers have already created fake video chat applications and users who are not aware of how to activate the official Facebook service, are likely to fall for it.
The scam application is a replica of the official plug-in, and is also called Video Calling. The scam asks the user to approve the application and grant permission to access personal information and post messages on the user's wall and newsfeed.
Those who click on the link that is then posted to the newsfeed are redirected to another site that can lead to the installation of malware programs on the user's computer.
Users are advised to delete any posts that reference “Video Calling” or claim to enable video calling immediately. Such scams can also be reported to Facebook security.
The official Video Calling feature can be installed by clicking the video call button in the chat window, and following the prompts.
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