Super Bowl is a time to kick back with friends and enjoy one of the most highly televised events in the United States. One never thinks that they need to be on high alert to protect themselves from cyber-criminals. Security researches have warned the general public that they are seeing an increase in malicious comments and Websites pretending to have Super Bowl Sunday related content to trick users into clicking on phishing sites or downloading malware. Their plan is most likely going to be disguising malware and phishing scams as online Super Bowl ads or commercials and other related advertisements to trick unsuspecting viewers. We all know the Super Bowl isn’t just about Football it is also about all the great commercials that companies spend tons of money to promote their products. So attackers will use this as an opportunity to exploit the interest with online threats and cyber-attacks, with the intention of stealing personal data. “The Super Bowl is one of the biggest ad events of the year and advertisers focus on extensive online and social media campaigns,” Said Eric Klein, a marketing manager at PC Tools, and Richard Clooke, a program manager at PC Tools.

Here are some tips for avoiding a phishing scam during this year’s Super Bowl:

• Keep your antivirus up to date: This is one of the most important things to do in order to avoid a phishing attack is keep your antivirus software up-to-date because most antivirus vendors have signatures that protect against some common technology exploits.
• Do not click on hyperlinks in e-mails: Never do this! You have no way of telling exactly where that link will take you. Often times it will take you to a fake HTML page that may try to scam you into typing sensitive information.
• Take advantage of anti-spam software: This type of software will help keep phishing attacks at a minimum. Most of these attacks come in the form of spam, so taking advantage of these programs will lessen your chance of getting hit with spam in your email inbox.
• Get Educated: Educate yourself on how you go about avoiding these types of attacks. Better to do the research beforehand then have to deal with the repercussions of not doing your research later. If you do get spam that is phishing for information, forward it to spam@uce.gov and report it.
• Use the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA):You can use the MBSA to make sure you have all of your patches up to date. You can download this free tool from Microsoft’s web site.
• Invest in InfoArmor Identity Protection: InfoArmor provides customers with step-by-step managing identity recovery efforts for victims prevent identity theft.

Spammers and Hackers always use Super Bowl and Christmas Holidays as a ploy to target users. This happened when the Super Bowl was at Dolphin Stadium in 2007, someone hacked prior the team website and every visitor ended up downloading a host of malware on their computers. Don’t let this happen to you. To learn more about InfoArmor Identity Protection visit us at DISH-Systems.com or call (888)566-3979.