Travelodge Cautions about Bulk Phishing E-Mails

According to Travelodge U.K, the hotel chain is conducting an investigation into an online hack on its computer system that held customer database following complaints from clients that they'd got spam mails. UPI.com published this on June 24, 2011. Says Travelodge that it has notified consumers cautioning them to resist replying to the electronic mails, which assert that there are jobs they can apply for.

Specifically, the e-mails offer members of Travelodge an entrepreneurial opening for only some hours of the day. To qualify, candidates must be 18-years or above of age while be a UK inhabitant and have merely the basic knowledge of PC-operation and the Internet. In addition, they must have an e-mail account of their own, the e-mail elucidates.

But then here's the problem. The said method of contacting people via e-mail may actually trick some users into believing the fraudsters' ploy and thereby responding to their spoofed messages with confidential or personal information. Unfortunately, responding yields plentiful e-mail ids to cyber-criminals who can subsequently reach people widely with their malicious campaigns.

Said Guy Parsons chief executive of Travelodge UK, very few users might've got an unsolicited electronic mail through the id they had registered with the company. According to him, Travelodge's chief priority was to make sure that customers' data was secured as he assured that his company had neither sold any client information, nor lost any financial data to hackers. SCMagazine published this on June 24, 2011.

Moreover, Travelodge issued a statement to the public indicating that it'd probe the situations wherein the Data Protection Act was breached followed with planning the actions that might be necessary to take. BBC News published this on June 24, 2011.

Stated Travelodge that cyber-criminals' most favored activity was seizing e-mail ids and names for dispatching phishing e-mails. Characteristically, such messages instructed recipients to follow certain web-link embedded on the e-mail, which eventually installed malware on their PCs, alternatively directly asked them for financial information.

Hence, security specialists recommend that end-users must be very careful in noting the e-mail's sender address as well as the URL name to which any given web-link may associate.

Related article: Turbulent Economy Results in Comeback of Malicious Pump-and-Dump Campaigns

» SPAMfighter News - 7/5/2011