Experts Warn to be Aware of ‘Unclaimed Vouchers’ Phishing Campaign Impersonating Walmart

Softpedia.com reported on 1st May, 2014 stating that security experts have spotted a new type of phishing emails purporting to be from Walmart, a leading retail giant with headquarters in Arkansas, (US) informing recipients of unclaimed vouchers.

The emails entitled "Your Walmart Voucher" tell the recipient that Walmart's reward server has recognized their email id to have USD 500 worth of unclaimed vouchers of Walmart.

It has been complicated to send the said vouchers to the recipient as he has not confirmed his records rightly on the said server. He is directed to carefully follow the link given in the email and fill-up all the fields properly to have his vouchers posted to his mailbox.

This is followed by the link.

Interestingly, the emails are signed by Tesco Personal Finance in the end which is a high-profile general merchandise retailer based at UK.

This indicates that similar phishing emails might have been sent to customers of Tesco and scammers have forgotten to change the signature while sending the same bogus emails to customers of Walmart.

Security experts point out that the link does not direct to website of Walmart or Tesco.

Actually the emails have no connection either with Walmart or Tesco and the so-said vouchers are all bogus.

Those who fall for the ruse and click the link to claim the promised coupons will be directed to a phishing website which asks their name, address, email address, SSNs (social security number), and phone number. Experts explain that on entering all these details and pressing the 'Submit' button, they will be told about the completion of update process and coupons will be sent to them by mail in the up-coming days. However, the coupons will never come.

The scammers now have come to know very important fact about their victims. Crooks know that those whose details were submitted are willing to obey and vulnerable to such kind of scams. Therefore, victims may be targeted in further scams with 'follow up' emails asking for more personal and financial details like credit card numbers leading to more personalized and exclusively targeted phishing scams.

Therefore, experts conclude to be careful about such unwanted emails and simply delete them.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/9/2014