The Anti-virus Times

Monday, May 14, 2018

We’ve all seen advertisements with good-natured people telling viewers how they can quickly make some extra money with virtually no effort at all. People who believe such ads and invest their money in dubious financial schemes are very unlikely to ever get their money back. In Russia, pyramid schemes appeared in the early 1990s, but even now scams of this kind persist throughout the world.

The idea of getting passive income over the Internet with no effort sounds quite appealing. It may seem like there’s money in the World Wide Web just lying around, waiting to be picked up. But for some mysterious reason, people aren't queueing up to do just that. Perhaps, laziness is to blame? Meanwhile, anonymous good doers are always eager to tell you about another simple way to get more money—that’s very kind of them, indeed.

Anti-virus Times readers know that nothing good can come from spam emails. They usually help Trojans sneak into a system. Then the latter will steal banking credentials and other sensitive data, start displaying ads, and mine cryptocurrencies. But sometimes unsolicited emails direct users to dubious sites.

Of course, opening links in spam emails is an inherently bad idea, but we have to do it because it's part of our job. And what do we find?

First, users are being offered the opportunity to invest their money and get a percentage in return. However, no further details are provided; it's just a "certain percentage".

Second (and most important) users are being encouraged to invite their friends under a referral scheme and get money from the people they bring in. It is a three-tier scheme: even someone enrolled by a friend who has been recruited by a friend you invited in will automatically generate another 1% of your supposed income.

#email_scam #spam #non-recommended_sites