Early this month, season four of one of the most long-awaited television series, “Stranger Things”, was finally released and promptly topped Netflix’s streaming charts.
Unfortunately, the desire of ardent fans to see new episodes as soon as possible has been actively abused by fraudsters. Numerous examples of spam emails and phishing pages have been designed to steal these fans’ money and personal information.
Even though new episodes have already been released, fans are still not safe, because not all of them choose to watch the series on the official site.
When users refuse to pay for a subscription to a streaming service and opt to watch via an illegitimate page, they could end up paying a heavier price than they are saving: losing their personal information and card data.
Taking advantage of the interest around this popular series, some cybercriminals have offered users the ability “to watch the new episodes for only US$1”. To access this offer, they were asked to register a new account and enter their address and bank details.
After entering their information, the fraudsters then drained users’ wallets, without the victims gaining access to the new season of their favourite series.
‘Stranger’ spam
Spam messages taking advantage of the popularity of “Stranger Things” have also been proliferating. These offer products of dubious quality, through promotional emails without the consent of the recipient.
In one email, users were given the opportunity to buy limited-edition graphic T-shirts related to the new season. Curiously, the site supported all languages and all currencies for payment.
It may not necessarily be a phishing page, but the fact that the ads for these products were promoted through spam, and the domain itself was only recently created, raises suspicions about the safety of buying from this page.
Here are some tips to avoid falling victim to scams:
- Avoid links promising early viewings of films or TV series. If you have any doubts about the authenticity of the content, check with your entertainment provider.
- Ensure the authenticity of the website before entering personal data, and only use official, trusted web pages to watch or download movies. Double-check URL formats and spellings of company names.
- Pay attention to the extensions of the files you are downloading. A video file will never have a .exe or .msi extension.
- Use a reliable security solution that identifies malicious attachments and blocks phishing sites.