We’ve already seen a high amount of bad online behavior taking advantage of the H1N1, or swine flu, outbreak in the past few months. Early this spring, cyber scammers were quick to capitalize on swine flu fears to infect computers, steal personal information, and make profits. After all, from the cyber criminals' perspective, the topic has all the right characteristics needed to pull off an online scam: a global nature, a hot media-hyped issue, and high levels of curiosity and concern by the general public.

Now, another new lure that you should be aware of has been spotted. According to reports, scammers are pushing a new spam campaign, this time sending e-mail messages purporting to be from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In a message posted on its website, the CDC says that the fraudulent e-mails reference a “State Vaccination Program”, requesting that users create a personal “Vaccination Profile” page on the CDC’s website.  But, clicking links in the message leads potential victims to a fake CDC site that attempts to install malware.

The CDC shows this example of the phishing message on its site:

It’s all the more reason to be cautious when checking e-mail!