Be careful with what blogs you visit. Google’s Blogger.com is reportedly being hijacked by scammers to spread malware through fake blogs. Security experts are calling this the “fake blog scam”. Blog hopping or surfing hasn’t been this dangerous.
Scammers are creating what would seem as a normal-looking blogs with ordinary topics like “Star Wars, school, furniture, Christmas, cars and girlfriends” to host a variety of script-initiated malware. What’s scary is that it’s virtually impossible for visitors to spot the danger of these blogs and these malware infested blogs are said to be in the hundreds.
An example of these blogs is a one that is supposedly owned by a fan of the Honda CR450 motor car which attempts to infect it’s visitors with the Wonka Trojan. Other malicious tricks involve redirecting visitors to a phishing site.
“These are not legitimate blogs that were compromised. They appear to be deliberately set up to promote phishing, which is against our terms of service. We are investigating, and blogs found to include malicious code or promote phishing will be deleted,” Google said in a statement to CNET.
Previously, scammers have used social networking site MySpace for spreading adware, luring users into phishing sites and even YouTube by using fake porn videos. Now they’ve entered into the blogosphere, using the popularity of blogs in the hopes of having a huge payday.
Since it’s virtually impossible to detect if a blog is malware infested or not, we better take precautionary measures ourselves.
Here’s my advice:
» Avoid visiting blogs that you’re not familiar with.
» Close the window or tab if a blog redirects you to a different site.
» Close pop-up windows and NEVER click, however tempting it may be.
» Use a more secure browser like Mozilla Firefox or Flock.
» Keep your anti-virus programs up-to-date.
Hopefully no one else gets fooled or victimized by these fake blogs and Google should get rid of them A.S.A.P. Practice safe computing everyone! :)
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March 23rd, 2007 at 7:35 am
@Jim – You’re welcome! Scammers and spammers are taking it to the next level. That’s why we should be careful and vigilant. Thanks for dropping by! :)
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Thanks for the tip. OK na lang sana kung reblog or splogs sites but spreading malwares, virus, trojan atbp?! now that’s really online terrorism.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:33 am
@Joni – Basically coz it’s easy money, no need to pay taxes and probably the thrill of victimizing other people and getting their money.
Thanks! :D
March 19th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Waaah. Why are there people like these scammers?! Pfft.
Jaypee, congrats! finalists ka sa PBA Best Tech blog! yey! :)
March 19th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
@benj – Thanks! I wasn’t aware of it until I read your comment. :)
@K – You’re not 100% safe but you are safer than most users. Sorry, I’m not that familiar with Kinja. Hehe..You’re welcome! :)
@fruityoaty – Thank you! :D
@bluepanjeet – We all have our own experiences with spam. That’s a good way of keeping safe and away from those scam blogs. God bless you too! :)
@Tess – No need to stop bloghopping. As long as you keep it to those blogs that you’re sure are safe.
@Ymir – True. You’re welcome! :D
March 19th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
wow! blogging can never be this dangerous… thanks for the information jaypee..
March 19th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
So I better get hold of my bloghopping mania. Hahaha! :-)
By the way, congratulations for being a finalist in the Phil. Blog awards :-)
March 19th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
good thing i’m using firefox. i also had a share of spam, of all countries china pa! the funny thing is, i don’t even understand their spam haha. as for the blog scammers, i don’t usually hop on foreign blogs which are not listed in the blogroll of my blog buddies. i think that would prevent me from going elsewhere and being infected. phishers, scammers, spammers, scrapers, posers, what else is next?
Keep well & God Bless!
March 19th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Hey Jaypee! Congratulations on being in the top finalists in your category! (PBA)
March 19th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
I’m safe! I’m using Safari & Camino browsers and Mac is secured. Hahaha, nagyabang!
Well just now, I thought my kinja feed was behaving differently because it was feeding 20 or so posts consecutively (from one of my blog-buddies). So I asked the owner why all of her old posts was appearing like every few minutes and found out she was actually editing it by adding tags/categories on each entry. Kala ko…
At the mo’, my blog is being attacked by spammers. Thanks for the info.
March 19th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
@benj – Haha..be careful with what you say bout Blogger, it has thousands of loyal users. :D
@dimaks – Yup, better safe than sorry! :)
@Jam – That’s true. They should improve their sign-up methods. Hopefully that would deter or minimize the number of these fake scam blogs. Thanks! Just trying to increase awareness and provide useful information to my readers.
The layout is messed up? I always use Firefox and so far I don’t see any problems with the layout. You might be using an extension that’s affecting the layout. Which part specifically is messed up? Anyways, I’ll go and check the tags and see if I made an error. Thanks for letting me know bout it.
If someone else is experiencing any problems with this blog’s layout, please let me know. Thanks!
March 19th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
More traffic for me then. They can flame me all they want.
By the way, you’re in the finals for your category! :P Congrats.
===
Walks away in shame.
March 19th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Blogger, because of lack of signup filter is very vulnerable to these kind of things. I think it also applies to other blog hosts as well.
Yeah, we have to be vigilant with our web browsing. Those are helpful tips you gave.
By the way, what happened to your blog layout? There seemed to be wrong with nesting of the tags. It’s quite deformed in Mozilla Firefox. I don’t know how it appears in IE though.
March 19th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
so ill stick to my blog rolls :)
March 19th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Tsk tsk, ang jologs talaga ng blogger kahit kailan.lololol.
Haha
*runs away from the blogger diehards*