The recent blockbuster movie “The Odyssey” is attracting record crowds back to movie theaters as is the new Spiderman movie, “Spiderman – Brand New Day.”  Both of these movies are only available in theaters and not at any legitimate streaming service.  However, this never stops scammers from taking advantage of the demand for the movie and offering phony pirate streaming websites promising access to the movies.  There are two versions of scams related to viewing these movies on pirate websites.  In one version of the scam, a fake browser warning appears claiming your browser is missing a required component.  If you click on the “Fit It Now” tab, you end up downloading harmful malware.  The other version of the occurs when you try to download the movie, but instead only manage to download malware directly.

Back in 2019 scammers set up websites promising a free pirated version of the “Avengers: Endgame” movie, an online search for websites promising to provide the movie for free took you to one site in particular that appeared to provide the movie, but a few moments after the movie started, it stopped and a pop up appeared requiring you to set up an account.  The pop up said that the account was free and that all you needed to do was provide your email address and a password.  Once you did this, you were then instructed to provide a credit card number and the CVC security code on the back of the card merely to verify that you were located in a country where the website was licensed to distribute the movie.   Unfortunately, the website did not provide the “Avengers:Endgame.”  The few minutes of what you initially saw of the movie were just scenes taken from the readily available trailers for the movie.  So not only did people falling for this scam not get to see the movie, they ended up providing their credit card information to the scammers in addition to providing a password, which, in too many instances, was the same password the scam victim used for other online services such as online banking.  The moral of this story is that trying to view a pirated version of a popular movie or show for free will only put you into a predicament that even the Avengers couldn’t get you out of.

TIPS

The first and foremost tip is not to use illegal streaming services.  They are illegal and what they are doing is also unethical.  Don’t trust search engine searches to provide you with legitimate websites for streaming services.  A prominent position in a Google or other search engine search only means that the websites appearing high were adept at understanding the algorithms used to position websites.  Never provide a credit card as a means of verification.  It is only a means of payment and as for the justification in the “Avengers: Endgame” scam that the credit card was needed to verify that you are located in a country where the website is licensed to distribute the movie, pirated versions are not licensed anywhere.

Another red flag that indicates that the website offering to provide a movie for free is a scam is the extension used for the video file.  Common extensions for video files are avi, mkv and mp4. However, malware loaded files often end in .exe so that if you see that extension on the attached file, you know it is a scam.  Finally, as always, you should have unique passwords for all of your online accounts so that in the event that a password on one of your accounts is hacked or otherwise compromised, all of your accounts will not be in jeopardy.

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