Events and topics that are interesting to a large number of people make great malware campaigns for hackers, as they tend to target the largest possible groups for their endeavors. If they’re going to plant a trap online, then they’re probably not going to do it with a method that very few people are interested in.

The recent World Cup is a good example of a major event that hackers used for illicit purposes. An article from EnterpriseAppsTech highlighted that 375 fake World Cup apps were created to target Android devices — in addition to approximately 2,000 daily cyber attacks that took place during the World Cup event.

The World Cup may be over (although Avira is still reveling in Germany’s win), but there are plenty of other events and topics to watch out for when clicking or tapping through the Internet. As a first step in protecting yourself, make it a practice to think twice before you engage with content that you find about extremely popular things online. This could be content related to celebrities, entertainment (movies, television, music, games), sporting events, top news stories, and so on. Just be careful, always.

The good news is that with a proper amount of caution and our security software running quietly in the background, you can feel safe while you research any of those popular topics that everyone is talking about.

The post Popular topics are also popular with hackers appeared first on Avira Blog.