Sports events are frequently used as social engineering lures for scams and the 2012 Olympic Games are no different. Over the past few months scammers have been rallying in an effort to steal as much money and information as possible from unsuspecting victims before the start of the 2012 Olympics.

People often think that Malware only comes from visiting dangerous websites, when in fact that is not true at all. You don’t have to be downloading movies or software to become victim to these attacks. Very often a seemingly innocent ad on webpages or social media sites will prompt you to download an apparent legitimate program that you will need to view something in particular. The source the malware stems from is often legitimate, and the sites themselves are also victim.

Phishing this. Hacking that. Online scam him. Online scam her. A company’s reputation can be compromised very quickly. Every minute of every day is filled with these attacks. No company is too big or too small to be ignored. At the household level no one is spared either. We would think that given the greater awareness both companies and individuals have regarding the multitude of online threats that the attacks would actually be declining but unfortunately appear to be rising[1] and / or some instances become more sophisticated in nature.

March is Fraud Prevention Month. Whether it is identity theft, phishing, online shopping, social media scams, or credit/debit card fraud, there are always victims and unaware accomplices who fall pray to big international crime organizations. The goal of Fraud Prevention Month is to increase awareness and educate public and private companies to avoid the criminal’s attempts so they can do no harm.

Mashable.com has recently reported that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL have put their differences aside and come together to create DMARC.org – the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance. It will provide consistent authentication results across their email services: Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and AOL.

Have you ever received a phone call from a person claiming to be from Microsoft? Well, Microsoft has now started to warn people that they may receive a call from scammers claiming to work for Security Departments of various well known organizations such as Microsoft.