by tonytran2015 (Melbourne, Australia).

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(Blog No.93).

#Trojan horse, #fake site, #WARNING, #DANGER, #cyber-fraud, #redirect

BEWARE of Fake WordPress.com sites.

When entering the word “wordpress.com” into the search box to carry out a Google Search, the results may give you a few fake sites. Any of those listings may trick you into entering it as a genuine site, but it redirects you instead to a fake site, from there you reveal your password and your account is compromised!

1. Always check the full heading in the address box of your browser.

Figure: Demonstration with an ACTUAL Google search for “WordPress.com” giving a result with the correct title line but redirecting to a totally different site sknvietnam.com (Screen captured on 2017 Oct 22-02h17GMT).

After clicking onto the search result, check that you have the address of the site you want.

In the example screen-captured here today, clicking on the result “WordPress.com/sknvietnam.com” (WordPress.com with sknvietnam.com on another line as in the photo) sends you to a login screen similar to WordPress.com login, but the address box has a long line appending after “https://wordpress.com/login “.

You have to be aware that appendage is usually not visible in the small address box of smartphones, tablets. In that case you may have your account and password captured by the strange site.

I carried out a Google Search and found that sknvietnam.com is only a fashion outlet, not a representative of WordPress.com. So things do not add up with that search result.

2. Only log in to the site with the correct address and with nothing else.

Sometimes a fake site can manage to stick a redirecting to the correct name to send your log in to a totally different site.

Sometimes a fake site also hides the front part of its long address from view leaving only the rear part visible, looking similar to a genuine address.