The Election Commission (SPR) announced the state elections for Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu, Penang, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan late last month.
As cybercriminals are known to piggyback on local trends, the SPR urged the public to lodge report with the Malaysia Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) or the police should they received suspicious political scam calls.
“In the last General Election (GE15), there were SMS scams claiming to provide eWallet top-up as well as scam calls that tried influencing Malaysian’s voting choices. Major local events like elections can be exploited by cybercriminals for their gain. We urge everyone to be vigilant during this season and exercise caution to protect their data and their money online,” says Genie Sugene Gan, Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy, Asia-Pacific, Japan, Middle East, Turkey and Africa regions at Kaspersky.
Kaspersky experts have the following advice to protect yourself from fallen victims of any phishing scams in time of the upcoming voting day:
- Employ common sense before handing over sensitive information. When you get an alert, never click the link in the email, SMS, or social media messages. Instead, open a web browser and type the address directly into the URL field to ensure that the site is real. For calls from unknown numbers, it is always important not to reveal any confidential personal or financial information to strangers.
- Never trust alarming messages. Delete such emails or messages immediately, and then call the relevant part to confirm that your account is ok.
- Do not open attachments in these suspicious or strange emails or messages, especially Word, Excel, PowerPoints or PDF attachments.
- Keep your software, apps and operating system up to date.
- Report to authority any mobile number involved in scam calls or phishing messages.
- Install reliable cybersecurity solution on your devices.
This article is written by Kaspersky