Hackers and scammers have always played on hot topics to catch the attention of unsuspecting users. With the advent of the spread of swine flu, these unscrupulous individuals have taken advantage of the level of fear and interest in the disease to victimize users over the internet.

Emails with subjects such as “Global panic as swine flu spreads to Europe” mislead people into click links or opening files attached to these messages which may lead to installation of malicious software. Some put a Hollywood spin in their headlines, claiming the disease has infected famous celebrities.

According to computer security firm PC Tools, other recent events have been used by these creative scammers, taking advantage of news regarding the financial crisis or President Obama’s inauguration.

Often these links lead to a malware-infected site or a seemingly benign PDF file which in fact works to obtain sensitive usernames and passwords from the infected machine.

 F-secure.com reports a sudden increase of swine flu-related domain names being reserved and predicts that some opportunistic groups may plan on scamming individuals under the guise of selling fraudulent medical products and services related to swine flu. Experts recommend users to refer only to reputable websites and government agencies.

However, the swine flu pandemic fears have not only gotten the attention of malicious third-parties but also the interests of various organizations in monitoring and informing the public regarding the disease.

Google is using its Google Trends service to map out internet search traffic for swine flu-related terms in order to create a potential map of the disease’s spread. Dubbed “Goggles Flu Trends”, it was launched after a correlation has been seen between the number of people searching for flu information, and those who are suffering from flu-like infections. Google believes this may potential predict areas where flu cases may concentrate, as this can track search results in real time. The project is still experimental, yet it has reported higher numbers of searches occurring in the Mexico City and some Mexican states as early as the week of April 19-25.

Facebook on the other hand has created a page titled “Mapping the Swine Flu Discussion”, it creates a color coded map of the US that shows the different percentage of users per state with posts related to swine flu in their account’s Wall. A large number of users from Texas has shown varying level of alarm regarding swine flu – ranging from fears of a pandemic of apocalyptic scale to messages of disbelief regarding the media hype surrounding the disease.