Bangalore:
The recent death of British singer Amy Winehouse gave cyber criminals the world over an opportunity to target unsuspecting Internet users. Bangaloreans were not spared either, as there has been a 30 per cent rise in cyber-crime across the city since the past nine days.
The criminals have cashed in on the unfortunate death of the singer and spammers launched a coup, which worked wonders for them, but left many Internet users with hacked mails, loss of financial information and crashed computers.
Click and lose.
An advertiser lost all mails and personal data and his computer eventually crashed after he clicked on a link sent to his Email. "The mail was sent by a close associate and read 'Amy Winehouse dies, leaves advertisers in a tizzy'. I clicked on it thinking it was an industry report, but shortly after that my system started functioning erratically. He called in a computer technician who told him that all data had been lost and there was no chance of recovery.
"The link I clicked on was automatically sent out to my entire friend list and some who clicked on it in turn, met with the same fate," he said. When contacted, his friends echoed his woes.
Meanwhile, other Bangaloreans who faced similar incidents immediately put up a status message warning friends not to click on the link.
Several city-based Internet users had to pay dearly for clicking on other spam messages like 'Amy Winehouse's death video', 'Amy Winehouse's final moments' and 'Amy Winehouse on crack hours before death'.
A boy was reprimanded by his parents for clicking on the link on Facebook. "He had recently joined Facebook and with the news of Amy's death spreading like wild fire, he clicked on a spam site. It was later discovered that all information on the computer was erased and a malware logo was blinking on the screen," said an investigating officer from a private detective firm.
This comes close on the death of Michael Jackson, which left cyber-crime departments astonished at the quirky tactics criminals were using to lure users. "This time cyber criminals are cashing in on users by sending spam mails with tempting subject lines. When users click on the link, they are asked to download an image or video, which is nothing more than malicious software programmed to grab confidential financial information from the compromised computer. This information is then traded on the online black market, sometimes for as little as Rs 5," explained Gaurav Kanwal, India Sales Manager, Symantec.
Adding to this, Deputy Inspector General of Police, CID, S Murugan said that his special team of investigators is probing such cases. "Victims sending us mails cannot expect instant replies. We are urging people to approach us directly so we can take up the case directly. There are many mails and SMSes doing the rounds and users should refrain from falling victim to them," said Murugan.