McDonald's Survey

I'd like to start this post with an apology [yes, again] as I have been rather slack in posting for quite a few weeks now. This has been due to a number of issues beyond my control including yet another change in my role. I still hope to post material here as often as I can, but it probably won't be as frequent as it has been. So, to try and start the ball rolling once more I have the following phishy tale for you to enjoy.

Here's a new one I've not seen before, the following e-mail arrived in my 'Phish' inbox late last night [screenshot below]:



That's nice if I answer just seven questions in a simple survey I will get £25.....I smell a phish, so what do we see when I click on the link?



Hmmmmm.....looks pretty good, quite believable wouldn't you say?

So, let me see what happens when I fill out the details with bogus data. First let me enter some bogus data for the survey and then click on submit. This is where I'm taken too next:



Aha.....Just as I suspected, this is a phish, as it wants personal data and my credit card data, including the CVV so that the promised £25 can be credited to my card, yeah right. So, let me enter in some more bogus data and click on the Submit button again.

I particularly like the mis-use of the MasterCard SecureCode,VeriSign and Verified by Visa logos, just trying to make you feel secure, how reassuring, eh?




The final page [shown above]informs me that my data has been entered correctly [yeah right!] and that I should see my £25 credit payment on my credit card within 3-5 businees days. More like my credit card will be misused or sold on to others to misuse within 3-5 businees days! Oh, and then I get taken to the real McDonalds UK website, nice ;-)

So, it seems that I was right to be suspicious, in fact a quick look at the link in the original e-mail made it obvious to me that this was a phishing scam.

The interesting thing about this Phishing attempt is that this is the first time I've seen one targeting McDonalds in the UK.

So, if you are an McDonald's customer, or think that you'd like £25 for free, be on your guard as it seems that the phishers are now spending significant amounts of their time to finely target their potential victims and try and get you to disclose your details....

As a final note, the Netcraft toolbar plugin which works with Internet Explorer and Firefox now has the domains used for this phish in their database. So, install it and use it, it could save you from making an expensive mistake!