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Scammers take advantage of ticket allocation to craft Olympics scams

Faster, Higher, Scammier

Fraudsters have begun ramping up the production of scams ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games in London next July.

The ticket allocation lottery process has been accompanied by two email-borne scams, with more surely to follow, Trend Micro warns.

The first of the scam messages comes with a .DOC attachment that asks for personal information such as mobile number, PIN number, and security code among others. The use of an attachment is to possibly designed to evade less sophisticated email filters.

Another slew of spammed messages falsely informs would-be marks that they have won the London 2012 Olympics Lottery, a non-existent draw purportedly organised by the "National Lottery Board of United Kingdom". The email invites recipients to respond with sensitive information such as their name, address, and date of birth as a possible prelude to an advanced-fee fraud scam.

Marks would be induced to pay escalating sums of money up front in order to get their mitts on non-existent winnings.

The ID theft and 419-lite (AKA lottery) scams are a classic accompaniment to landmark sporting events, such as the World Cup and the Olympics. As Trend Micro points out, this isn't the first scam specifically themed around the London Olympics and it is highly unlikely to be the last. ®

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