Phishing Scam Targets ‘Frequent Flyers’ of American Airlines

American Airlines has cautioned about a new phishing scam making the rounds online to try and defraud its frequently flying customers.

Displaying an apparently genuine corporate address, the phishing e-mail states that American Airlines has launched a new scheme to reward a customer with 25,000 AAdvantage miles and $50 if he answered an online survey of 5 questions. However, the e-mail doesn't mention the way reward can be redeemed, except that it provides a code for the reward - AA-1028917109.

The security researchers state that the signs of cheating are clear in the e-mail. Corporate logos are absent, punctuation mistakes abound, and the subject line is nonsensical.

Commenting on this new e-mail scam, Marcy Letourneau, Spokeswoman of American Airlines, said that such phishing e-mails were indeed found over intervals of time, as reported by Wfaa on February 23, 2010.

The Spokeswoman said that the company's majority of frequent flyers were normally familiar with American/AAdvantage. Consequently, they could easily recognize an illegitimate e-mail like the one circulating, she explained.

Letourneau further said that as people were increasingly becoming aware of online fraud, most individuals think twice prior to providing the security information asked in the e-mail. American Airlines' customer care tried to remain alert about such developments and if any of them occurred, they immediately posted a warning on Flyer Talk, one of the company's leading websites/blogs, Letourneau concluded.

Owing to the newly circulating phishing scam, American Airlines is taking its clients to its company website to provide information regarding doubtful or fake e-mails. Accordingly, the website is displaying the phishing message's duplicate for customers' knowledge.

It is further directing recipients of e-mails of this kind to forward them wholly to webmaster@aa.com so that American Airlines can probe into the scams.

Notably, the latest phishing scam first emerged in 2008.

Finally, American Airlines suggests customers to remain cautious of the lure presented in the message. They should deploy the most appropriate security software like spam filters so that it may be possible to block these kinds of phishing e-mails, the company advises.

Related article: Phishing With A Redirector Code

» SPAMfighter News - 3/5/2010