Scam Of The Week: Prince Last Words On Video

Today, news broke that Prince Rogers Nelson was found dead in his home in Minneapolis at age 57. He was found unresponsive in an elevator and was declared dead shortly after. He performed in Atlanta last week as part of his "Piano and a Microphone" tour, a stripped down show that has featured a mix of his hits like "Purple Rain" or "Little Red Corvette".

This is a celebrity death similar to Robin Williams that the bad guys are going to exploit in a variety of ways. You have to warn your users right away that a series of scams are underway using the Prince death as social engineering trick. Looking at earlier celebrity deaths, there will be scams that claim to show Prince's last words on video.

Whatever ruse is being used, your users will wind up with either infected workstations at the house or in the office, giving out personal information or unleashing ransomware on the network. Give them a heads-up that especially now they need to Think Before They Click.

Also, with the recent earthquakes in Ecuador and Japan, there are charity scams sticking up their ugly heads that people will fall for. I would send your employees, friends and family something like the following. Feel free to copy/paste/edit.

"Today, news broke that Prince Rogers Nelson was found dead in his home in Minneapolis at age 57. He was found unresponsive in an elevator and was declared dead shortly after. Internet criminals are going to exploit this celebrity death in a number of ways, so be careful with anything on anything related to Prince's death: emails, attachments, any social media (especially Facebook), texts on your phone, anything. There will be a number of scams related to this, so Think Before You Click!

Also, with the recent earthquakes in Ecuador and Japan, there are charity scams sticking up their ugly heads. If you want to make donations, go to your favorite charity by opening your browser and type their link in the address bar. Do not click on any links in emails."

For KnowBe4 Customers, tomorrow morning there will be a new template "Prince Dies" in the Current Events campaign that I suggest you send to everyone more or less immediately.

if you are not a KnowBe4 customer yet, at times like this, it is very good to know what percentage of your users are vulnerable to emotional manipulations like this. We recommend you do your free Phishing Security Test and find out what your phish-prone percentage of your users is.