They figure that at such a time, people have their guard down in their eagerness to substantiate rumours and half-truths. That has meant, for the legion of internet swindlers, this has been the ideal moment to trot out spam e-mails and throw up malicious websites to infect victims' computers.
As news of Michael Jackson's death was coming through, the scams started appearing almost instantaneously. As the days have passed, the guys behind these nefarious operations have stepped up their game.
Mr Jackson's death "took a lot of people by surprise - the spammers too," Dermott Harnett of anti-spam engineering at Symantec Corp told the Associated Press.
"It might take them some time to really pounce on this issue. They are catching up pretty quickly, though."
Spam is the most common way for fraudsters to find victims after these types of events. The easiest way to lure people into the trap is to trick users to click on e-mail attachments so that the online crooks can infect computers and take command of them for more underhand activities.
News 8 months ago
