Honda Customers Foxed by Phishing Scam

Honda New Zealand has issued a warning to its customers that they should be cautious of an e-mail scam that is currently making rounds to acquire their banking details, as per the news published by PCWORLD on June 23, 2010.

Currently, unsolicited e-mails, purporting to be coming from Honda, are being circulated worldwide. The subject line of the fake e-mail reads "2010 HONDA RESULT" or some other similar kind of Honda-endorsed competitions which inform the recipients that they have won plenty of prizes or cash money in an alleged competition.

According to a news release from Honda in this regard, the presentation and content of the message could show a variation. It could also push recipients to follow a link supposedly to a website related to Honda or could ask to contact an agent of the Company for further information.

Graeme Meyer, Marketing Manager, Honda, said that the Company came to learn about the scam on June 21, 2010 when a customer contacted them with the fraudulent e-mail's copy. Since then, two more people had informed the Company of the same scam, as per the news published by PCWORLD on June 23, 2010.

Meyer further said that the e-mail addresses that had been targeted by the scam had been taken from the publically available websites and not from a Company's mailing list.

Honda New Zealand has strongly advised customers to turn down this e-mail and any follow-up e-mails that may emerge later, rather these should be deleted at once from the PC.

In any case, users should avoid following any link given in these messages, replying to or revealing any information to any e-mail address provided in the e-mail. This will help users to protect themselves from being redirected to malicious websites or installing malware on their PCs. malware once installed on the user's PC could assist cybercriminals in capturing the keystrokes of the user to steal his valuable information without his consent.

Meanwhile, it has been noted that the e-mail scam is escalating in New Zealand. In a research, security vendor Symantec found that phishing e-mails showed an increase in the country. As per the research, 86.6% of e-mails that netizens received in New Zealand in June 2010 were spam. It was also found that one out of every 1,381 e-mails which New Zealanders received during the month contained a computer virus.

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» SPAMfighter News - 7/1/2010