More than half of students and recent graduates scammed at university - Kaspersky comment
September 2019 by Kaspersky
Following today’s news that ‘More than half of students and recent graduates have been scammed at university, as figures reveal the average amount lost is £420’, find a comment below from David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky, on what students can do to protect themselves.
“With the academic year now underway, many students are settling down to experience the realities of their lectures and exams. Whilst moving away from home to study for a degree can sometimes be overwhelming, today’s findings are perhaps far scarier. The alarming extent to which students and recent graduates have suffered from scams during their courses demonstrates that cybercriminals are using a range of sophisticated attacks to target vulnerable groups in society – including young people. One major aspect of this is the materials that are acting as a disguise for malware. In fact, Kaspersky experts have recently uncovered that from August 2018 to July 2019, there were 53,531 malicious or potentially unwanted files disguised as ready-to-use essays and textbooks for schools and universities.
“To avoid falling victim to malware, Kaspersky advises that students:
– Not open email attachments that seemed suspicious, or from someone you do not know
– Only search for books you need offline or in trusted online libraries
– Pay attention to the downloaded file’s extension. If you are going to download academic books, the file should not end in the extension .exe
– Pay attention to the person who lends or gives you a USB drive with work to share.
– Do not take USB drives from anyone you don’t know
– Start using a reliable security solution like Kaspersky Internet Security. Configure it to automatically scan every time an external drive or USB drive is connected to your PC”