Should you trust this ‘BBC’ news report? Work from home scam spammed out

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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@gcluley

Who do you trust online?

Your friends? Lady Gaga? The media? How about the BBC?

If you read a news story on the BBC website, would you trust what it was saying?

A Naked Security reader forwarded us this interesting email which (fortunately) had been quarantined by his anti-spam defences. What’s particularly interesting is the webpage to which it links.

If you were tempted to click on the link are taken to a website which looks like this.

A pretty convincing replica of the BBC website. But, of course, it’s not the real BBC News website at www.bbc.co.uk/news, but instead a page that is copying the popular site’s graphics and style.

The URL in the address bar might be a giveaway, if you were watching carefully enough.

And see how it refers to a housewife in Abingdon – that’s because I was in Abingdon, just outside Oxford, UK, when I visited the webpage. The site has tailored its content to appear more compelling to me by determining where in the world I am.

If I had…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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