A security heads-up to bloggers

Today in my blog post, I am not going to write anything technical, tips and tricks. But I am going share few information with other bloggers for whom this information is very important in computer security perspective.

This afternoon I got a short and sweet email from a mail ID asking me to write product review for one of their product and they provided me a link to the software. In return to my review they offered me a free license for the software on which I have to write the product review. Well, everything looks fine so far and I gave a confirmation in email that I will check it a bit later in day. I opened the link they provided me in email and it’s like a company which is selling their products online. As I haven’t received any confirmation from other side about the license part they promised me, I just did a brief search over internet with the email ID and landed in Sara’s blog. I have seen a professional way of spreading virus after reading the blog entry where sara also got email like me but luckily came out of that crap because of her good antivirus (that’s what she says in her blog!).

The actual story is that, few people over internet are targeting bloggers and asking them to write review for their products and offering % or free licenses in return. The links they are providing in emails are downloading virus into your computer which in turn suffer your system in many ways if you don’t have proper Antivirus software. I know, there are many companies which ask people to write review for their products to increase their sales, but for the first time I have seen people misusing this channel to spread virus. Now I am in dilemma whether to respond to such emails or not. If I skip, I might miss some good chances and if I accept I will waste my time in fixing AV issues.

I will find-out the precautions to be taken against these scams and come up with another blog post pretty soon.

Happy Learning…,
Sitaram Pamarthi