Spam News

McDonald's phish bad for computer health

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

A new phishing scam is targeting McDonald's customers through a satisfaction survey that promises money in exchange for personal financial information.

The eight-question satisfaction survey promises to add $75 to a consumer's account once the user provides their bank account information, SCMagazineus.com reports. The scam also asks for a full name, email address, credit card number, expiration date and electronic signature.

Apparently, this is the first kind of phishing scam aimed at McDonald's customers, Ivan Macalintal of Trend Micro told SCMagazineis.com. Such scams are usually seen targeting banks and financial institutions.

This follows news from yesterday that the U.S. is officially in a recession, which unfortunately may be playing in the phishers' favor by using people's tendency to save money during an economic downturn against them.

According to Cyveillance, there has been a sharp increase since September in phishing attacks. The daily average of attacks went from the low 400 range to 1,750.

"We are seeing spikes in phishing attacks far higher than we have ever seen in the past, due in part to cybercriminals taking advantage of the recent instability in the financial markets," said Panos Anastassiadis, CEO and chairman of Cyveillance.