People looking to scam the general public are often more than willing to capitalize on the death of a celebrity – such as Prince, who passed away Thursday – by deploying emails, social media posts, and text messages carrying malicious links and attachments.
Fraudsters have already begun circulating phishing emails and social media posts that claim to offer access to Prince's last words on video. These tactics are similar to the social engineering tricks scammers used to exploit the deaths of other celebrities, such as Robin Williams.
Regardless of how users are deceived, they could end up dealing with infected workstations, divulging personal information or unleashing ransomware onto their network.
The Clearwater, Fla.-based cybersecurity firm KnowBe4 sent out the following warning to its customers:
"Yesterday, news broke that Prince Rogers Nelson was found dead in his home in Minneapolis at age 57. He was found unresponsive in an elevator and was declared dead shortly after. Internet criminals are going to exploit this celebrity death in a number of ways, so be careful with anything related to Prince's death: Emails, attachments, any social media (especially Facebook), texts on your phone, anything. There will be a number of scams related to this, so Think Before You Click!"
KnowBe4 also warned of charity fraud schemes that revolve around the recent earthquakes in Ecuador and Japan.
"If you want to make donations, go to your favorite charity by opening your browser and type their link in the address bar. Do not click on any links in emails," KnowBe4 said.
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Roy Urrico
Roy W. Urrico specializes in articles about financial technology and services for Credit Union Times, as well as ghostwriting, copywriting, and case studies. Also: writer/editor of a semi-annual newsletter for Association for Financial Technology since 1997 and history projects funded by the U.S Interior Department, National Park Service and Warren County (N.Y.).
