DeviantArt Scam

DeviantArt is a websites allowing artists and creative people to share their productions with like-minded people. Unfortunately, scamming on this website has not been avoided, and, those computer users who have an account on this website or like browsing through the photos and pictures should be very attentive. The DeviantArt website has recently been found to have some spam links to other websites. This technique of online scam is not new to security experts because popular social networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are known to be used as a platform for deceiving unsuspecting users.

In 2012 many fake DeviantArt accounts were spamming an affiliate link in the comment sections of some artwork and photographs. The victim would be provided with a shortened URL, which means that the URL to which the user was taken was not available in the first place. The link led the end user to different websites, including the website clickdealer.com or the download page of a Facebook program named Angry Birds Space.

The latest DeviantArt scam offers links to downloadable electronic books. The links can be accessed by doing a search for downloadable books. According to the post featuring supposed access to downloadable books, the user will be directed to azlibrary.net, which is a website hosted in Germany. Interestingly, the website was registered approximately 3 months ago. Upon clicking on the link provided, the victim is taken to a scam survey, named gripnode.net. The MyWot.com website categorizes this website as unreliable, and it is stated that the website has already been recognized as abusive.

According to the scam website gripnode.co, the user is supposed to fill in a questionnaire in order to get access to electronic books. Moreover, the website hosts a file which has turned out to be a potentially unwanted program distributed by the OutBrowse.com. The installation of the program distributed by Outbrowser ends up with the display of third-party advertisements, which are generated to drive more traffic to certain websites. OutBrowser is a monetization platform that helps software publishers to generate revenue from their free applications.

It is possible to encounter some legitimate links to e-books on the DeviantArt website, but it is also important to be alert to the possibility of encountering some spammy accounts, including mariasteves, yvoneart, and zoombzz. One click on a corrupted link may inflict a lot of damage; hence, it is highly advisable to acquire downloadable books from reliable and trustworthy sources instead of relying on links provided on websites that are not related to electronic books.