McDonald’s Attacked With Still One More Phishing Scam

Investigators at AppRiver a security company caution that phishing e-mails are circulating, while posing as messages from McDonald's an internationally-famous fast food franchise, and promising an award of $250.

Reportedly, the scam electronic mail informs the recipient that McDonald's has selected him for taking part in a survey that the non-partisan polling company is conducting. Also, the survey involves ongoing national-level events and it is brief, while the recipient will require just 5-7 minutes for answering it, the e-mail adds.

However, to access the alleged survey, a related web-link, which's provided in the e-mail, leads users onto a site that depicts 5 questions that are really unrelated to the opinion poll.

Moreover, clicking on "Next" following the answering of the questions also brings up a spoofed form that asks for the user's financial and other personal information such as his credit card particulars.

Actually, users are made to understand that this is needed for getting the cash award; however, the information lands up with the phishers who'd eventually exploit them, AppRiver outlines.

Indeed, the phishing e-mails in attempts to appear genuine, use McDonald's color scheme, logo, as well as the "I'm Lovin' It" label inscribed on the top, the security company observes.

Nevertheless, the e-mails have several obvious problems, which should hint the readers that they're a fake.

First, the e-mails refer McDonald's as a surveying company which's non-partisan whereas McDonald's isn't any surveying company, let alone being partisan or non-partisan.

Furthermore, the survey asks for personal credit card details of the recipient so the cash award can be deposited into his account. But the catch here is as to how McDonald's will deposit the amount in the case of people answering the poll, who do not own an account for any credit card.

Meanwhile, just like the McDonald's phishing attack, another scam targeted consumers of Coca-Cola earlier during January 2011. In that too, a reward worth $150 was promised for answering one particular survey, while AppRiver says that that scam e-mail had text lifted from an earlier spoofed e-mail as its web-links took onto McDonald's site similar as in the latest scam.

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» SPAMfighter News - 1/31/2011