Do you know what the DeviantArt scam is?
The website DeviantArt.com is a platform where graphic artists and creative people can share their artworks and exchange opinions. Moreover, this is one of the websites where Internet users may find scammy links to unsecured websites. The DeviantArt website is not as popular among online scammers as some popular social networking websites such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, but it is advisable to be careful when browsing DeviantArt.com.
Scam-related issues on DeviantArt.com are not new to security researchers. For example, in 2012, an attack against Deviant accounts was launched and resulted in the display of unauthorized comments aimed at driving traffic to scam websites. The victimized users were accused of spamming Deviant art and had to clean their reputation. A year later, in 2013, DeviantAr got affected by another scam attack, again related to links leading to various other websites.
The latest Deviant scam issue is related to links promoting free downloadable books. The links can be found by doing a search for downloadable PDF books on the websites. According to the posts promoting e-books, the user will be taken to azlibrary.com, which is a website hosted in Germany. The website is relatively new; it was registered about 3 ago. Upon clicking on the link provided by the post, the user is taken to the website gripnnode.co featuring survey. The visitor is required to complete a survey in order to get the right to continue. The user is invited to register, but, upon clicking on the button, he or she is again provided with a scam page offering a downloadable file.
After installing the file promoted by the scam website, some third-party advertisements are likely to be displayed. It has been found that the file can be detected as an affiliate of OutBrowse, which is a platform aimed at software creators who want to earn money from their free-of-charge products. OutBrowse offers its service for computers and mobile devices, and is claimed to be capable of offering the client tailored solutions.
The DeviantArt website features several spammy accounts seeking to redirect the victim to a scam website; hence, it is highly advisable to pay close attention to the content available on the website. If you access the website that you do not know or that looks suspicious, do not hurry to download the content available on the website but do some research on that website.
In non-techie terms:
Spammy websites can be encountered at any time when browsing the Internet, and the website DeviantArt.com is one of those websites. The term DeviantArt scam refers to a variety of scam campaigns, and the odds are that some new strategies to deceive Internet users will be developed in the near future.