What is the Spider–Scam?
While Avengers: Endgame is the highest grossing movie of all time, the anticipation for Spider–Man: No Way Home has been astronomically high, promising to weave together the past 20 years of Spider–Man’s cinematic history. Millions of people have been desperately excited to see it, with their judgement possibly impaired by this desire.
Cue scammers looking to take advantage of this audience. Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky detected a lot of fraudster activity around the release of this film, stating:
“With the excitement surrounding the release of the newest Spider-Man film, the inattention of thrilled viewers is being abused by cybercriminals. The premiere of ‘No Way Home’ is no exception but an attractive lure to spread threats and phishing pages.”
The emails that are circulating are essentially well-constructed promotional emails (using official materials like logos and posters) telling users that they can see the movie for free, and even download it onto their computer, all by entering their credit card information into the email. Obviously, this doesn’t work, and instead harvests people’s credit card information for insidious purposes.
