Some spammers target specific dates as they believe more people will open their messages e.g. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day etc. Some choose April Fools day as a target and the numbers of such messages does go up noticeably on that day.
You might get messages with titles such as:
- April Fool
- I am a Fool for your Love
- Fooled you
- Have a laugh at this April Fool
The message may contain a link to click to see the joke or may have an attached file to download.
Either way, if you click to download or open this “joke,” it will attempt to install malware onto your computer – the most common form of this is the Trojan Horse which means malware that pretends to be harmless but gives the scammer access to your files and data.
Some genuine April fools jokes seem like scams and just waste people’s time without being funny.
Do be more suspicious than usual on April Fool’s day of all messages that arrive by email or text and be wary of clicking on anything supposedly leading to something funny – unless you are sure it is safe.
If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.
