Survey Scammers and Adware Pushers Target TRON Fans

Security researchers warn of multiple scams that trick TRON fans into subscribing to premium rate services or infecting their computers with adware.

TRON: Legacy, Disney's sequel to the 1982 science fiction film TRON, premiered in theaters worldwide in mid-December and fared pretty well at the box office.

It looks like scammers couldn't miss the chance to take advantage of people's relatively high interest into the movie, especially that of the franchise's fans.

"[...] Hunting for some TRON action on the internet may end in frustration, surveys and installs aplenty," warns Christopher Boyd, senior researcher at GFI Software.

Most of the scams offer to view the movie online at high quality. These are usually advertised through YouTube videos with titles among the lines of "Watch TRON : Legacy Online HD Blu-Ray Quality."

Clicking on the links listed in the descriptions of these videos leads users to websites that ask them to take a survey before being given access to the movie.

"This video has been temporarily locked. In order to unlock it, you must fill out one of the surveys above completely. These surveys take approximately 30 seconds to 1 minute to complete," the pages claim.

These deceptive surveys usually attempt to subscribe users to premium rate services and collect their personal information for future targeted spamming in the process.

Of course, the websites don't actually allow users to watch Disney's new movie, even if they do all that is asked of them.

The survey scams have become a common occurrence on the Web and social media websites, particularly on Facebook. Scammers earn hefty commissions through affiliate marketing schemes each time users complete them.

Other TRON free streaming scams use the "required codec" social engineering trick to get users to download and install Adware programs like ClickPotato, ShopperReports, QuestBrowser and blinkx Beat.