Katrina scams proliferate

Phishing scams traditionaly rely on clever social engineering, naivity and ignorance.

The naivity and ignorance remains, but the Asian Tsunami and Katrina Hurricane disasters have provided the first big opportunities to socially engineer around sympathy towards fellow man.

We can expect every natural and human-induced disaster to be followed by this trend in the future. Following on the success of the Asian tsunami scams, there are now some 2,300 Web sites advertising Hurricane Katrina relief services, and most of them are presumed to be bogus, the FBI said Friday. In addition, scammers are four times more prevalent than after the tsunami disaster, according to the watchdog site www.Scambusters.org. Scams include:

• Phishing: In this scheme scamsters use fake Web sites that pretend to be legitimate relief organizations. If you click on the site and enter credit card or other financial information, it will be used to steal your identity. Any contributions you make go into the pockets of the scammers.
• Viruses and trojans: Spam is sent that includes photos of disaster areas or individual survivors, and these attachments contain computer viruses. These can enable hackers to take control of your computer and obtain information that they can use for identity theft.
• Fee-based spams: These are unsolicited e-mails that offer, for a fee, to locate missing relatives and loved ones caught in the hurricane