Phishing websites surrounding the next year's Fifa World Cup are on the rise. These are sites created in attempt to acquire confidential information such as user names, passwords and credit card details.

This is according to research centres of information technology security company Symantec. In a statement on Friday, it said that the phishing sites are mainly in the form of football celebrity sites or football clubs with huge fan bases.

Most of these sites will prompt users to enter their Facebook login credentials in order to connect to a profile of Lionel Messi, FC Barcelona, or Cristiano Ronaldo. They also try to pass off as official fan pages by containing images of the players and clubs. After the user's details have been entered, they will be redirected to a legitimate community page to create the illusion of a valid login. By then however their information would have been captured by the phishing site.

Internet users are advised to guard themselves against phishing attacks by not clicking on suspicious links in e-mail messages and to not enter personal information in a pop-up page or screen.