Nope, sorry buddy, you didn’t win 2 free plane tick

Where it all starts!

It was just a few days ago. I got a Whatsapp notification from my friend Naomie.
I open it. She forwarded me a message that she received that said the following:

“In celebration of its 93rd birthday, Lufthansa is giving away 200 free business class tickets to a destination of your choice.”

As appealing as the offer seems and even though I decided to click the link, I was skeptical.

Easy, isn’t it? Too easy…

I can smell the scam from miles away and it doesn’t take me long to discover the catch.

It was all in the URL. When I took a closer look, I noticed the ‘L’ in Lufthansa.com is truncated and looks more like a beheaded L.

At first glance, this is not easy to see and unfortunately, according to Facebook, more than 17,259 people fell victim to this scam.

I know what you’re thinking: a like? a share? What’s the risk?

In this case, liking and sharing leads to numerous unwanted consequences and dangers (as described below), that you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy…

[su_service title=”Scenario 1″ icon=”icon: user-secret”]
Sometimes, malicioius website will ask you to enter your phone number
to validate your participation, to which you would have subscribed
to whatever kind of paid daily service, in any case something
very expensive for you.

[su_service title=”Scenario 2″ icon=”icon: user-secret”]
Sometimes, you are led to download malicious applications or browser extensions that enable access to all your browser data, connections,
passwords, and  credit card numbers (so now you finally grasp the deep meaning of the word Phishing.) 

This tiny little scam seems harmless, but every day tens of thousands of people are victimized and even sometimes willingly and wholeheartedly participate in spreading the epidemic.

But don’t worry, here are some tips to avoid such consequences.