7 bad tricks used to trick people online

Sooner or later each user of the Internet will face a trick or trap. Here’s the list of the most widespread ones. Forewarned is forearmed!

You can literally find anything on the Internet; unfortunately this includes bad guys. There are thousands of ways to deceive an Internet user ranging from legal to illegal – some even take a walk on the fraudulent or wild side. No matter the level, all of them regularly find their victims.

If you want to avoid falling for some sort of trickery online, please keep in mind that there are always people looking to take advantage of you. They will try to extract your personal data (legally via social sign on or some malicious means) or make you install malware or gain access to your digital wallet or bank account. If you suspect that someone is looking to do this to you, keep your guard up.

To help you out in these scenarios, we’ve compiled a list of some of these nasty tricks you can reference for your protection.

1. Do you like it? Whether they are looking to gain audience or increase profit, many websites turn to dirty tricks. Perhaps the most nefarious are pop-ups. By default, they are annoying, but when they are accompanied with fake buttons to close them, it becomes unbearable. These windows just refuse to go away until you perform an action like entering your email address or visiting pages filled with advertisements. That’s why many people refuse to click on or interact with anything inside a pop-up window whatsoever.

Another bad option employed by scammers is to turn the “close” button into an unobvious text hyperlink, which says something like “I already like your awesome site.” Inexperienced users might ‘like’ and ‘share’ the page just to get rid of the pop up and thus receive an additional serving of spam.

The sites that resort to these types of tactics are ones that you should not trust. Chances are that if they are this aggressive at gaining your data, they will not show it any respect once they have it. Don’t click on “Like” and “Share” buttons just to close the pop up window. It’s better to look for the real button to get close the page. This site treats you badly, so why should you give them your personal data?

2. Free full speed download! Some photo hosting sites and torrent trackers place the download button on the lower part of the site, but will also fill the page with large download buttons that catch a users’ eye but don’t actually drive to the download you wanted.

Unfortunately in this case, users can easily download and install something else, more specifically one of the applications, created by this site’s partner-advertiser.

This is called adware. If you don’t want to find yourself cleaning your system from a bunch of unnecessary applications, you should carefully check each file you download. Or you can install Kaspersky Internet Security, which protects users from problems like this.

3. Attention! Your PC is infected! Fake pop ups are even more dangerous. They imitate system notifications, messages from dating sites and social networks or warnings that a “virus has been detected.” At best these messages will redirect you to the advertisement pages where you can download a useless “antivirus” or login to a scummy dating site.

At worst fraudsters might spy on your browser sessions and detect when you open, e.g. your online banking website. Then they launch a pop-up window, which imitates notifications from your bank. Deceived users might login into their “banking account” and thereby share their credentials with criminals.

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You can dispose of any banners with the help of special browser extension, like AdBlock. Kaspersky Internet Security users can also turn the Anti-Banner feature on.

4. Download driver software for free and without registration! Looking for driver software on the web, you can easily come across numerous web sites, which offer to download “useful” software like drivers, patches and system updates at the lovely price of Free, but in fact they spread malware. It’s an old scheme, but efficient. If you don’t want to be deceived, you should download software only from official sites or reliable third-party website. If you want the software, do it right.

5. Can I have your passport, please? Fraudsters act with impudence on online auction and shopping platforms like eBay. Notably, they can steal money from you regardless of who you are: a seller or a buyer.

That’s why you should be very careful, when your counterpart asks you to do something. If this person wants a secret SMS code “to prove anything,” your CVV2-code or any other strange thing — don’t share this data. Or at least reach out to your bank, which will surely you tell the same: don’t do it.

6. Million in a week! Many people want to get some easy money, but you should keep calm, if you don’t want to become a victim of another online financial pyramid, or a HYIP. Be sure: the majority of nameless investment programs, which work online (and offline), will peter out much earlier than you cash your money out.

7. “Bonus” Features! There are bad deceive tricks aiming at users of torrent-trackers and websites with pirated games. Just imagine: you are trying to download a book or a movie from an unknown torrent site. Do we need to explain that this is a bad idea?

There are a lot websites that imitate torrent trackers, but instead of pirated files they spread key loggers, Trojans and ransomware — basically, all kinds of malware. In terms of cybersecurity it’s very bad to download anything from unknown sites. If you risk doing it, carefully check the file’s extensions. If you see .exe instead of expected .doc, .rtf., or .torrent, you are being deceived. In fact, checking all files downloaded from unreliable sources with an antivirus is a must-do.

In conclusion we’d like to add, that all reliable sites try to improve their interfaces and make them user-friendly. If you see that a website is filled with ads, spam and gibberish or if it boldly demands your personal data – don’t use it. Protect yourself — install a good antivirus. We can’t help but recommend Kaspersky Internet Security — an award winning security solution, which will protect you from all kinds of Internet threats and more.

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