FTC’s Drive to Check Father’s Day Phishing E-Cards

Cyber security experts and Web analysts reported that phishers and spammers proactively worked flooding the mailboxes of unsuspecting users with phishing e-cards this Father's Day on June 15, 2008.

However, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was working on an equal footing to educate Fathers regarding phishing e-mail cards and urging them to know about the conning tricks of spamming and phishing.

Spam includes flooding users mailboxes with numerous copies of the same message in order to forcibly push emails upon people who wouldn't otherwise like to receive them. phishing is a more conniving method of sending a bogus e-mail (an e-mail card as in the present case) to a random user. The e-mail falsely claims to have come from a legitimate organization to trick user into divulging personal identifiable information or financial details. This information is used by cyber-crooks for identity theft and steal money.

In the present case, the phishing e-card directs recipient to another Website and urges to update their personal information like passwords, credit card details, social security number, and bank account information with a seemingly authentic organization. However, the Website is phony and designed to con users off their personal information.

The FTC, in its motto to prevent innocent fathers from falling prey to any phishing e-cards, has released a sample of bogus e-mail card on its Website. The card could be viewed at www.ftc.gov/dad (and www.ftc.gov/padre in Spanish), and gives useful tips to "Dear Old Dads" on recognizing and safeguarding themselves against phishing attempts.

As reported by many media and online sources, FTC and other partner government agencies provide a great deal of free educational material about guarding against cyber fraud, phishing attempts and online financial scams at OnGuardOnline.gov. The visual presentations are useful tools to learn and spread awareness against phishing and spam.

Despite FTC's efforts to educate fathers against spamming and phishing, there are some reports from security provider, Messagelabs, that Father's Day related spam is rampaging through the Internet with a lot of malicious phishing emails arising from a botnet called Szrizbi.

Related article: FTC Reaches Million-Dollar Settlement For Spyware

» SPAMfighter News - 7/2/2008