Watching the stock market rise and fall can be nerve-wracking for some people. For others, it can mean spotting an opportunity to buy low and sell high. Then there's another crowd all together different. This is the crowd that plans to take advantage of stock volatility to scam investors.
Stock scams, called the "pump-and-dump" have been around for nearly as long as the stock market. But like any scam they become more and more advanced as technology improves. In today's world, the pump-and-dump scam which is designed to artificially inflate the value of a stock so that an investor can gain more from the sale of the stock, involves using botnets, malware, and spam.
For you, this means more opportunities for identity thieves to take advantage of you. Perhaps they'll only use your identity as a means of distributing the information that makes the pump-and-dump possible. But a thief could also capture your information to use your money to buy the stocks originally.
The lesson? Don't take investment advice through email. Oh, and learn how to avoid getting caught up in a scam like the pump-and-dump or anything else that happens to be popular with criminals at the moment.