Watch out for this Facebook ad! The virus will download for you

Beware of advertisements imitating the well-known FileHippo service, Security Magazine warns. While the ad contains an image of the actual service, the link leads somewhere else. Attentive users will definitely get it – they have the letter i twice in the domain. Thus, the domain has the form FileHiippo and not FileHippo. The suffix, in this case .digital, is also suspicious. However, the actual service uses the .com suffix.

The overall design of the fraudulent page is similar to the right page. However, the attentive eye will notice that the overall design of the site is so smooth and that applications lack images. When you open a subpage with a specific application, it’s even worse and it all looks at least unfinished. Security Magazine mentions that the site was quickly created in 17 days.

After you begin downloading any file, you will begin downloading a file named filehiippo.msi and not the application. This is another warning sign that you are downloading something else that pretends to be your application.

Beware of suspicious advertising on Facebook

From time to time, I also encounter suspicious, mainly English, advertisements. A great precaution is to look at the comments or look for more information on Google if you’re really interested in the ad. You can find out from other sources whether the offer is legitimate or just a scam. For example, if you type “filehiippo” into Google, it will find the right version of the site and some legitimate sources for it (Wikipedia).

To find out if something is a scam or not, add the word “review” or “scam” or “legit” after the phrase in English. Review means a review, so if someone rated the software or page, you know their opinion. Scam means deception in Slovak and the word legit means something legitimate, true.

Always check to see if any medium is drawing attention to the word. If so, such a result would certainly be among the leading results. In our case, we have Wikipedia here, which mentions that the FileHippo service is legitimate (but in the correct form of the name!) And is used to download or update freely available software.