Latin Americans’ fraud alert has been raised as bulk spam mailings about the investments of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez began hitting inboxes shortly after his death in March.
The information is contained within a report by internet security specialists Kaspersky Lab released last week.
According to Moscow-based Kaspersky labs, the death of Chavez has not only made global news headlines, but has also given fraudsters ideas to trick mail-readers.
“As always, the imagination of these ‘Nigerian’ fraudsters knows no bounds,” the report said.
The report does not provide evidence the messages came from Nigerians spammers.
Examples of the false messages include requests for recovering diesel funds, spinning a story about a deal in South Sudan and contacts claiming to be friends with the late Chavez.
“This mythical “friend” has access to the money which the late president kept on the bank account of his secret lover,” the report explained.
Other mass spam attacks included one operating falsely as the Atlantic Hotel booking service.
The mail, pretending to come from the hotel manager, informed the recipient about his expected arrival on March 20, with a Trojan-designed attachment to extract financial information from the users’ computer.
While the United States and China maintained their top position as the countries with most junk mail in March, Italy scored high with antivirus detections in February.
However, the US overtook Italy in virus detection last month, with Germany in the second place and Australia following in third.
Phishing percentages doubled from February to March, with social networks as the main target and financial e-pay organisations and search engines.
Globally junk mail now sits at 70.1 per cent, lower than in February, but an increase of malicious attachments at 4 per cent has been detected.
