Haiti Earthquake SEO Poisoning
By Jason on January 14, 2010 | Phishing, seo poisoning, haiti earthquake
Tuesday's Haiti Earthquake had not only caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, but also a huge number of cybercrimes. A lot of domain names related to Haiti tragedy have been registered recently, however, not all of them are dedicated to honorable causes. Several fraud websites have been reported to imitate collecting money for the earthquake victims although they were actually funding scammers.
The tactics of creating a fake charity-collecting website for the victims of natural disasters have been known since 2005 when hurricane Katrina hit the US. Fraudsters do not only include the keywords referring to the disaster into the domain name, but also use the Black Hat SEO tactics such as purchasing search engine advertisements and Twitter tag-poisoning in order to get better positions in Google and other search engines.
However, the cybercriminals not only attempt to trick the visitors into donating money, but may also urge them to download malware and other security threats.
It is very important to be aware of to whom does one actually donate their money. If you are a caring citizen and want to help those suffering from the Haiti Earthquake disaster, please visit the official UNICEF Eartquake in Haiti page and show your support.
More Phishing news
Diablo 3 scam – be careful
We all know that scammers love scandalous, shocking and world-class news that are interesting to everyone from Alaska to Mozambique. These sensations attract the largest pools of people which gives scammers highest chances for success. This time it is the long-awaited computer legend from Blizzard - Diablo 3. Read more.- Cybercriminals find ways to use YouTube and Tagged
- Facebook is used as a tool for targeting Pinterest fans
- Are you an artist? OK, but 'Draw Something' is a scam!!!
- Mousetrap Trojan steals money from bank accounts
- Scammers hit the Pinterest site's users
- Another Facebook scam: “OMG.. I Hate Rihanna”
- New wave of attacks threatens websites hosted by WordPress
- Trojan fixes library code. How weird is that?
- Love is... money! Valentine's Day scam
- Free iPhone 5 on Tumblr? Avoid the scam!
