Scammers targeting Kanye West’s lastest album “Donda”

Kanye West’s Donda, the most anticipated album release of the year, is not only for music fans but is being targeted by scammers.

Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky had warned that cybercriminals are taking advantage of the album release to spread files with various threats such as phishing under the guise of Donda.

In a statement, Kaspersky said it decided to investigate the album release due to the hype surrounding it.

“Even though experts did not notice huge interest from scammers, during the period from July to August 2021, they managed to find several examples of fake downloads and fraudulent links masquerading as the album,” it said.

Experts found two adware files that disguised themselves as a media file with a new track. The first file was named Download-File-KanyeWestDONDA320.zip_88481.msi and the second was Kanye West _ DONDA (Explicit) (2021) Mp3 320kbps [PMEDIA] __ – Downloader.exe

The statement also highlighted other types of scams that can come in different disguises. Users are tricked into clicking on links which download malware to their computers or mobile devices.

In the first type of scam, users receive a link to download the “album”, and are asked to participate in a survey and confirm they are not a robot. The survey includes a series of questions, such as: “how much do you earn” and “do you want to become rich?”

After the survey is completed, a user is directed to a scam website to make money on bitcoins but the link to the album never appears. Users who fall for the offer by giving away their personal data may lose their money instead of getting access to the album.

In the second type of scam, a user finds a link to an archive with an album. But in reality, this archive will be infected with malware and the user’s device will be infected after unpacking it.

There a few simple tips on staying safe online, firstly it is safer to access content from official platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music as they get filtered by the digital platforms.

While some scam e-mails and websites may look just like real ones it is advisable to hover over the URL and look for misspelling or other irregularities.

Install a trusted security solution that can detect phishing and malicious content. These secure solutions are necessary to be able to solve the majority of problems automatically and alert you on suspicious activity.