Don’t get fooled by top rank results appearing on your search engine page as cybercriminals have realized that they can use blackhat SEO technique to spread fake Coronavirus-related information as a bait for propagating their attack campaigns.
The bigger picture
Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Baidu are some of the world’s top search engines that serve millions of internet users across the globe. In fact, these search engines pave the way to generate traffic for most websites. To be on the first page of the search results, many website owners leverage various methods for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
However, these techniques are not far from the reach of scammers who are misusing it to lure victims into visiting fake websites for different COVID-19-related scams. Termed as SEO spam or spamdexing or blackhat SEO, the method involves manipulating search engine indexes and misleading users to scam content.
SEO spamming around Coronavirus
Given the level of anxiety around the spread of COVID-19, spammers are using it as an opportunity to pollute search results with fake and meaningless results around the disease.
Imperva researchers observed that scammers used bad bots to malign search results with the keywords around ‘Coronavirus.’ For instance, the bad bots exploited the public’s need for relevant medical information in order to gain visits to their fake pharmacy sites.
Several fake variations of the John Hopkins University’s COVID-19 dashboard - that look similar to the original one - were also listed by various operators. In one incident, the fake interactive map site included a number of links to a fraudulent pharmacy site.
Search results for other keywords such as ‘que es coronavirus,’ ‘coronavirus pandemic simulation,’ ‘wuhan city china wikipedi ..
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