Phishing Scam Supposedly from Coca-Cola Spreading Across SA, Alerts PenBev

PenBev the bottling company of Coca-Cola situated inside the Western Cape locality of South Africa is cautioning about several phishing e-mail scams, which use the name of Coca-Cola South Africa, as a result, advising the general public for being wary of the messages, reports mybroadband.co.za dated February 25, 2013.

Fraudulent electronic mails along with false SMSs that miscreants are dispatching pose as messages from Coca-Cola, informing recipients that they're winners of lottery prizes while asking them to provide personal information so they can claim their prize money.

Denise Green, Spokesperson for Peninsula Beverage Company (PenBev) is substantiating that e-mail scammers are using various trademarks and brands of Coca-Cola in their phishing e-mails without consent. According to him, Coca-Cola has nothing to do with the e-mails and SMSs soliciting sensitive information towards prize redemption of any sort whatsoever. Coca-Cola won't ever request confidential information for example, bank account particulars else an identification detail. Hence, it is advised that general people don't disclose any personal information, Green concludes. Mybroadband.co.za published this.

Security analysts after examining the currently spreading phishing e-mails as well as fake SMSs inform that they're presently conducting an investigation into the incident by coordinating with suitable agencies.

They describe phishing attacks, as in the above case, as incidences where the perpetrators proceed by establishing an association with their victims so they can extract the latter's financial and/or other personal information.

Notably, typical indications of a phishing or scam e-mail are: one, grammatical and spelling mistakes inside the e-mail message; two, inappropriate utilization of business trademarks; three, e-mail writer's id being from non-corporate, freely available e-mail accounts like Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo!

Security researchers explain that in general if any e-mail appears unbelievably true then possibly it's a scam. Such e-mails alternatively SMSs shouldn't be responded with details asked. However, in case anybody has already given out his private info in reply to the above kind of e-mail, online site or correspondence, he's recommended for instantly stopping all further message exchanges, while informing federal and/or local officials who will advise him on ways for safeguarding his personal information as well as privacy.

Related article: Phishing Attacks, Growing in Sophistication

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