Phishers Target McDonalds with Fake Survey E-mail Scam

Phishing scammers in a new attack are conducting a fake McDonalds' survey in an attempt to deceive users into revealing their credit card information.

The phishing fraud, according to computer security specialists, involves a fraudulent e-mail that promises the user $80 for answering some marketing questions regarding the food giant McDonalds.

While the e-mail appears completely genuine with the McDonalds logo embedded, consumers need to look for at least two signs that raise suspicion, said Susan Wornick, Consumer Reporter of NewsCenter 5, as reported by thebostonchannel on February 2, 2009.

According to Wornick, the first sign is that there are definite misspellings in phishing e-mails. Another sign is how McDonalds or any other business could sustain by paying people $80 for just completing a form.

In fact, a number of Bloggers too report that the "Customer Service Satisfaction Survey Scam" of McDonalds is completely bogus. Normally, a paid online survey values between $3 and $5 on an average. But a survey that pays $80 for giving few minutes clearly confirms that it is a fraud, writes Survey Seeker on its Blog.

Survey Seeker explains that food companies like McDonalds, Burger King and any other business typically use professional companies to compile survey data on their behalf. Actually, there will be no survey that a company directly conducts, and in every instance, the respondent would never get to know the company is carrying out the survey, neither in the beginning nor at the conclusion of the questionnaire, as reported by Survey Seeker on February 3, 2009.

Furthermore, legitimate survey organizations would never request the respondent for his credit card details under any circumstances; thus, again indicating that the new McDonalds survey is a phishing fraud.

Meanwhile, the food giant too has confirmed that it has nothing to do with the survey. It asks consumers who receive the phishing e-mail to simply erase it.

In fact, even a government online site Snopes.com that investigated the e-mail described it as a fake.

Related article: Phishers Expand Their Sphere of Attacks

» SPAMfighter News - 2/19/2009