Chances of top Malware to hit SA is high in 2013

Soon after the death of former South African president Nelson Mandela, millions of people across the world shared messages expressing their grief on the social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. But, what came as a shock is the news of cyber criminals trying to exploit people through e-mail and text messages to offer target cash for services or a business venture under Nelson Mandela’s name.  

The computer users should be careful as the hackers might try to exploit any major event to steal personal and financial information of the user. They might send e-mail or text messages from fake “distant Mandela relative” offering target cash to the people by asking their personal details. Such messages could be spam or might have malware attached to it.

As per a survey conducted by O+K Research, spam is the most common problem of computer users and about 68 % of people are concerned about unsolicited mail that increase the chances of virus infection. Also, these days more and more spammers have started exploiting people on social networking sites.

As per managing director BulkSMS.com Dr. Pieter Streicher, the social networking sites are not use to spamming and that you see a lot of them on forums on the Internet. For example, people are discussing something and suddenly someone post an unrelated comment along with an advert. Such activities are part of scams.

According to another survey conducted by researcher Giovane Cesar Moreira Moura in 2013, almost 50 % of spam was limited to 20 ISPs. One of the typical scams that hit South Africa in 2103 was a message from Sars that says that a taxpayer received substantial payment and the same was link to a malicious website that steal credit card information of users.