Harry Potter and his chums are under attack - but this time it's not You Know Who and the Death Eaters, it's crafty cyber criminals looking to cash in on the anticipation ahead of the big Pottermore launch in October.

GFI Lab's Christopher Boyd has exposed a number of scams circulating around the Google-powered eBook centred site, with the most obvious being scammers selling fake accounts for the beta trial period.

Another scam is entry via a completed survey, with the danger of your details being passed around amongst other "marketing" (i.e. spamming) companies in order to pepper you with unwanted junk. Often, there are links to go through too that contain malware and other mucky digital nasties as well.

Pottermore is also warning against people that trading genuine beta accounts is against its terms and won't be tolerated. It didn't go as far as saying guilty culprits would be banished to Azkaban, but we like to think that they would.

"It seems to be clean at time of writing, but six exploits, five Trojans and two scripting exploits would have been more than enough to give you bad hair day," said Boyd.

"You can expect more hacked sites serving Malware alongside poisoned search engine results - both text and image. If your kids are happily babbling on about the joys of Pottermore, it may well be worth sitting down with them and pointing out the types of shenanigans they need to avoid."

Pottermore goes live in October, you can submit your email address now and be notified when registration opens.