How to Avoid Olympic Scams & Olympics Viewer Quiz

We have all heard about these kinds of scams for years. You buy some sort of ticket online and when you go to use it…well…it is not actually a ticket. That's right. It is a worthless piece of paper.

This happens everyday but it is even more prevalent around large events such as the Olympics. You really always need to take precautions when you are online but even more so right now.

That Retweet about Olympic Tickets? Make certain to check the source.

The article your thinking of sharing about buying Olympic souvenirs? Think again or at least check to make sure they are legitimate souvenirs.

Educate yourself on what is a scam and what is real.

HOW TO IDENTIFY SCAM MAILS

As the London 2012 Olympics are upon us, there will be a lot of cases where emails are sent falsely claiming to be from London 2012, or other organizations involved in the Games. In reality, most of them are the first step in a scam to lure you in. Common scams include:

• Emails saying that you have won an Olympic lottery that you haven’t entered
• Emails saying you can apply for an Olympic Games job for a fee

Ignore any communication that asks you to reveal information, such as bank details or to pay any amounts of money up front. London 2012 will only ever use a secure website to collect personal or bank card details. Look for a padlock symbol in the browser window. The website address will begin with ‘https://’. If you click on the padlock, your browser will either give our full title (London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Ltd), or identify our sites as part of london2012.com. If you don’t see a padlock, or if the site name is not what you are expecting, then you should not enter personal or financial information into the page.

The following conditions are points to consider if a mail is a scam. One or more of these conditions should apply, depending on the case.

Condition 1:
The return addresses or From: field uses free email provider such as gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.

Condition 2:
The recipients email address is not included in the To: field. Or sometimes the mail is sent out to a volume of recipients.

Condition 3:
The email does not greet you specifically. It uses greetings like Dear Winner, Good Day, Dear Recipient, etc. Or sometimes it doesn’t have any greeting at all.

Condition 4:
The email claims that the recipient won a large amount of money from a lottery.

Condition 5:
The recipients were asked for their personal details such as full name, bank information, credit card number, nationality, country, passport number, etc.

Condition 6:
Uses the name of legitimate corporations/companies or any legitimate lottery organizations.

Condition 7:
Users were asked to pay for the processing fees, delivery fees, transfer charges or even travel to personally get their prize.

With London 2012 also committing to use social media more to update visitors and overseas viewers, the opportunity for unforeseen scams is also possible. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media sites will be choice grounds for hackers.

RACE TO SECURITY – TAKE THE QUIZ

Want to know what kind of Olympic viewer you are? Take the Race to Security quiz from Trend Micro to find out.

So what did it tell me? It said that I should watch out for Search Result Fraud and Social Media Fraud. I was even given some great tips such as watch what I am Tweeting out and to make certain that I am not Tweeting out suspicious posts or Tweets. I should also go straight to information sources that I trust.

Check the Malware blog for real time updates of Olympic threats at http://blog.trendmicro.com and you can see which websites to avoid.

Keep up with all of the Digital Joneses families here.

Disclosure: The Digital Joneses Study will include gadgets for myself and my family. Although we have been provided with these products to help evaluate the challenges within the study, the opinions, thoughts and statements expressed on this blog remains our own and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Trend Micro.