Phishing scams have been around for the longest time now, and it still surprises me how creative and imaginative the people behind these scams can be. It used to be that they relied solely on scams revolving around lotteries and stuff. A lot of people have wised up to that tactic, however, and I do not know if there are still those who fall prey to such scams.
This new scam is quite interesting, however, as it is not the usual scheme that phishers employ. They actually have pulled McDonald’s into it – at least by name. What has been reported so far is that an e-mail has been going around, and it contains information about a survey for McDonald’s. Here is the sample e-mail, courtesy of Hoax-Slayer:
Subject: Receive $50 Bonus To Participate In Our Customer Satisfaction Survey Dear McDonald’s Customer,
We are planning big changes for 2009 at McDonalds AU chain of restaurants and because your oppinion is very important to us, we invite you to take a short Customer Satisfaction Survey that will help us improve the quality of our food and services.
We know your time is valuable, so we will give you a $50 bonus just for taking our quick 7 question survey. The entire process will take no more than 5 minutes.Take the survey (link to bogus website removed)
You can participate in this survey only once.
According to the same web site, the e-mail circulated in Australia. Again, it is FALSE; a scheme to steal financial information from you. Even if you are not in Australia, you might do well to look out for this kind of e-mail.