As Weird Al once put it, “don’t download this song.”
Arianators, beware. There’s a fake Ariana Grande album that’s making its rounds on the internet, and unfortunately for Ari’s die-hard fans, this one just isn’t worth adding to any collection.
According to Mashable, the bootleg copy of Ariana Grande’s ‘Thank U Next’ contains malware that could potentially steal all your information once downloaded. More specifically, the malware reportedly takes your banking information, only to be used fraudulently by the people behind the virus. You may not have paid anything for the album, but you also run the risk of emptying your bank account to some black hat hackers out there, so be warned.
The way it works is that once you unzip the .rar file named ‘Ariana_Grande-thank_u,_next(2019)_[320]’ supposedly containing the album, the hidden Trojan will be installed on your computer to do its dirty deeds. The same Trojan is also said to be circulating via folders containing photos of ‘attractive women’ and government documents. Also, only 21 out of 69 Antivirus programs are able to flag the virus as malicious, which makes it more dangerous.
Over 500 million online users are said to be vulnerable to this new malware, according to security firm Check Point. The good news is that it’s only found on the fake copy, so as long as you don’t pirate anything, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Something worth considering if you’re a pirate, eh?
