Don’t fall for ‘Start your 2020 with a gift from us’ email scams

Cyber criminals keep finding innovative ways to hack users' private information. As the New Year kicks off, hackers are now running a new scam called "Start your 2020 with a gift from us."

As expected, the scam involves hackers trying to convince users in giving their private inform through an authentic-looking email featuring a clickable link. In the some cases, hackers are offering free Macbooks as well. The scam also targets users who are expecting items by courier from people overseas.

"Sometimes you get an email saying that the item is delayed because the authorities want to inspect it; or there's import duty; or there's a supplementary delivery charge if you can't collect it from the depot yourself. And to help you get through the paperwork easily, there's often a tracking code and a clickable link in the email," said researchers at Sophos Naked Security reader.

Experts suggest that these email scams can actually fool some users as mails from courier companies with similar documents are quite common. Citing an example, researchers point out the landing pages of the links in such scam mails are personalised for the recipient's email address. These emails also claim to have status of your item, making users click on the "find your barcode" links.

ALSO READ: Google removed 1,700 'Joker' apps with malware from Play Store

"If you fall for the scam and click through, you'll see some realistic-looking pages that take you to a fake pay page. The crooks then present a plausible conclusion for the fake transaction by simply claiming that it didn't go through," researchers added.

The latest report comes shortly after Kaspersky released a new report on scams targeting the online shopping. According to the Kaspersky study, a malware dubbed as 'Shopper' that has affected over 14% of Indian users.

"Despite the fact that at the moment, the real danger stemming from this malicious app is limited to unsolicited ads, fake reviews and ratings issued in the name of the victim, no one can guarantee that the creators of this malware will not change their payload to something else," Igor Golovin, Malware Analyst at Kaspersky, said in a statement.