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 April 21 – 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.
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:
“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 ... Think Before You Click!”
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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.).
