After a long wait, it’s finally here: the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones. The massively popular television series has countless fans from all over the world. This is the perfect hunting ground for scammers. They’ve improved their phishing scams and hope to take full advantage of the new season.

Fake Game of Thrones merchandise and gifts

Oren Koren and Hadar Waldman from checkpoint.com have done research into fraudulent Game of Thrones websites. They found several dodgy websites, that are made to get your credit card information, phone number, email address, full name and any other contact details that they can use against you. They also found a website that installs malware on your computer.

Most websites, however, contain phishing scams. These websites use the Game of Thrones brand to lure you in and collect your information. Some pose as a merchandise store, while others pretend to host a giveaway. The goal is that you buy a product from the merchandise store, which you will never receive, or that you enter your contact or credit card details for the giveaway. The image below shows one of these fake giveaways.

Avoiding scams with CyberSec

Koren and Hadar have compiled a list of all the fraudulent websites they have found during their research. You can find the list on their blog. But, of course, many fraudulent websites might still be missing from their list. It’s advisable to take measures to prevent getting scammed. You should always make sure that you trust a website before you click on a link. Checkpoint also advises to “make sure a site’s URL begins with “https” and there is a closed lock icon near the address bar”.

To be even more certain that you won’t fall victim to any scams, you should use some sort of threat prevention. CyberSec is one of the threat-preventing services you could use. When you enable CyberSec, it will block all suspicious websites so that malware and other cyber threats can’t infect your device. CyberSec is a feature of NordVPN, so you can only use it if you have a NordVPN subscription.

NordVPN is our number 2 pick in our top 10 VPN providers list. Make sure to take a look at the entire list before deciding which VPN you’re going to subscribe to.