Lord Voldemort may have it in for Harry Potter, but watch out Muggles — cybercriminals have it in for you.
Just in time for this Friday's (July 15) release of the wildly anticipated final Harry Potter film, " Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," online scammers have launched a new dastardly campaign to steal your identity.
Detected by the security firm PC Tools, the online threat targets Web surfers by offering them a pirated version of the movie before it hits the big screen.
The Harry Potter hoax is currently lurking on file-sharing sites. PC Tools explained in an email to SecurityNewsDaily that many of the search results linked to "free downloads" of the final film contain corrupt attachments that attempt to lure users into visiting a website called xxx.movieyt.com, where they can purportedly obtain a password to watch the film.
[Use at Your Own Risk, P2P File-Sharing Networks]
From there, users are prompted to click another link to "verify" their password, and, as a final step, they're told to save "what appears to be a legitimate file."
But, as with all similar scams, there is no movie, and following the scammers' directions gives them full access to your computer.
If you come across this Harry Potter scam, ignore it, and never download any suspicious attachments.