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.
Related News:
Email filtering still top priority - 3.18.2010
Despite the recent success authorities have enjoyed in shutting down certain major botnets such as Waledac and Mariposa, the BBC recently reported that spam levels have not faltered greatly and the threat of infection from the tainted messages is still very real.
Social networking games profting from malware, moving to iPhone - 3.15.2010
Games like Farmville and Mafia Wars have become increasingly popular on popular social networking sites like Facebook. For users who pay for the service, the threat of malware and spam is minimal. However, those who provide contact information and fill out surveys in exchange for points in the games open themselves up to scareware, spam and other problems.
Web security breaches rock Hotmail - 3.12.2010
Users of Microsoft's free email service are advised by the Redmond, Washington-based software giant to change their passwords and be vigilant as an increase in spam activity on the site has led to web security breaches.
Spam won't go away, but it can be avoided - 3.10.2010
Email filtering works to an extent in ridding computers of spam, but those pesky emails offering millions of dollars for nothing and inexpensive prescription drugs always seem to find a way through even the most stringent filters.
Spammer arrested on extortion charges - 3.9.2010
A California man was arrested and charged with extortion following a threat he made to insurance company New York Life to send spam emails aimed at hurting the company's reputation. Anthony Digati of Chino, California also planned to send spam to the company in hopes of receiving $200,000.
|
