14 DAY TRIAL // Every time a natural disaster strikes, certain folks see it as an opportunity to launch spam attacks aimed at convincing people to donate money that finally ends up in their own pockets. Although, at the time of writing, no incidents of this kind related to Hurricane Gustav have been registered yet, authorities remind people to stay focused in order to avoid confidence games.
In 2005, many scammers made a profit out of the donations that people willingly made for what they believed was a noble cause. “On the day Katrina hit New Orleans hundreds of donation sites appeared online, many if not most were scam sites. Well this time around it looks like the people who like to register domain names in anticipation of a storm's arrival have already started registering them for Gustav and Hanna. I'm not suggesting that they are up to no good, but simply pointing out that the rush has started and we need to make sure our users are aware of the potential for scam sites appearing online in the next few days.” warns Marcus Sachs, director of SANS Internet Storm Center.
Federal authorities have also taken a keen interest in the matter. As the number of domain registrations related to Hurricane Gustav has flourished these days, there is a chance that many of these websites were designed for malicious purposes. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team released a brief list of recommendations meant to open the eyes of the people whose nature is innately a bit too… charitable.
The list starts with the popular “do not follow unsolicited web links received in email messages,” which is a reasonable thing to do regardless of the situation. Users who want to donate for the victims via fundraising websites have to check if the web properties are registered on the Federal Trade Commission's charity checklist. Also, whenever users receive charity related emails, they should also check whether the organization in question is reliable, by seeing if its telephone number is listed in the Better Business Bureau National Charity Report Index.