Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups

The Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups are an online tactic that seeks to steal personal information and, in some cases, money, by offering fake prizes selected from popular Apple brand products. Although the Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups pretends to organize its offers annually and even may provide pertinent details like your home location (roughly identifiable through your IP address), the Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups actually displays automatically without any additional qualifications. While malware researchers haven't found any legitimate prizes at the end of these Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups, they do warn that you should consider any information given to Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups as effectively compromised, and protect yourself appropriately.

The Annual Scam that Keeps Coming Back

Amongst the many, other dangers on the Web, malware researchers often warn against fake surveys, which are traditional lures for phishing attacks. The Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups are a format that these attacks may take and seem to have been in distribution since mid-2013. Malware experts still are gathering information about the websites responsible for these attacks, but may verify the use of torrenting Web domains and one United Kingdom-based mobile phone site, Mobilephone.co.uk.

Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups use a logo that cleverly borrows much of the appearance of the YouTube logo, along with a basic Geolocation identifier that lets them pretend that they've specially selected you from your country, state or province. These Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups may claim to provide prizes including the latest iPhones or iPads, but, in reality, no prizes are rewarded for completing the relevant surveys; you simply are redirected to another offer.

However, Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups do get something out of its survey-takers in return for nothing: privileged information, such as phone numbers and street addresses. Malware researchers warn to be watchful for attacks that could follow up on this information, such as spam deliveries or automatic sign-ups for premium services.

Keeping an Annual Phishing Attack from Being an Annual Trip to Future Problems

Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups and other phishing attacks may be thwarted by both user education and Web-browsing security solutions, of which malware experts particularly recommend disabling JavaScript, Java and other features that may be exploited to your disadvantage. The Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups also are cases in point for the dangers of visiting sites that have poor reputations or often are involved in unsafe activities, such as software piracy. Minding the websites that you visit can eliminate many points of contact with Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups and other pseudo-believable offers.

Victims of phishing attacks a la the Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups also should take appropriate precautions of their own. Because mobile phones are particularly likely to be automatically signed up for a variety of premium services, you should double-check your mobile phone bills regularly for signs of extra 'features' you don't want. Some forms of personal information given through similar phishing attacks, such as passwords, should be changed at your earliest convenience after the fact, to prevent the associated accounts from being compromised. Whatever the nature of the information given up, a PC user who's fully-informed is better suited to dealing with the aftermath of Annual Visitor Survey Pop-Ups than one who continues to assume that this hoax is based on real prize-awarding activities.