Sad but true hacks

Right now, look out for phishing scams masquerading as contribution links or organizations to help Japanese victims of the recent earthquake and tsunami. Feel free to support the relief effort through legitimate NGOs that you trust. In addition, beware of links online that are malicious. While not the same as a “phishing” scam for your personal information, clicking these links can trigger a download – a tsunami of bad code flooding your computer. Currently the disaster in Japan is being searched a lot and some of the links returned will install malware if you click on them.

The upshot: in addition to sticking with trustworthy relief organizations, stick with known, trustworthy news sources for your news, commentary, analysis and especially video. This is also true when you click through on a post via a social network.