Red Cross Spoof Emails
Spoof Emails have started coming in which APPEAR to be from the Red Cross. This is just a SHAME. The emails actually ask for credit card information. Unfortunately, a lot of people new to the Internet do not realize that email is unsecure and that no decent company or organization is going to ask you for credit card information via email.
Upon receiving the spoof email today (09/05/2005) I immediately called the Raleigh Area Chapter (http://www.trianglearc.org/) and told them what was going on. They have already been dealing with other spoof emails already. Most of the spoof emails come from people offshore in other countries.
The spoof emails ask for credit card info. Once entered, the data is sent to a web page. In this case the web page was set up on a no-name free hosting site (common) owned by someone in Canada and that site was hosted by Yahoo! Unfortunately the web page is still up and running. There is just no easy way to repost these things to the no-name companies or Yahoo or to the Red Cross.
As of right now, anyone who enters their credit card info will have it stolen immediately. This is how the Internet runs right now. I wonder what will be done in the future to help prevent this kind of thing. I wonder how many credit cards will need to be stolen. I wonder… The only answer I see at the moment is education. People need to sit through at minimum, a 2 hour crash course in protecting themselves online.
It is absolutely disgusting to see people taking advantage of the victims of Katrina and creating new victims. These people are greed driven $#!7heads and should be punished accordingly no matter what country they are in.
Len
Absolute Computers
Upon receiving the spoof email today (09/05/2005) I immediately called the Raleigh Area Chapter (http://www.trianglearc.org/) and told them what was going on. They have already been dealing with other spoof emails already. Most of the spoof emails come from people offshore in other countries.
The spoof emails ask for credit card info. Once entered, the data is sent to a web page. In this case the web page was set up on a no-name free hosting site (common) owned by someone in Canada and that site was hosted by Yahoo! Unfortunately the web page is still up and running. There is just no easy way to repost these things to the no-name companies or Yahoo or to the Red Cross.
As of right now, anyone who enters their credit card info will have it stolen immediately. This is how the Internet runs right now. I wonder what will be done in the future to help prevent this kind of thing. I wonder how many credit cards will need to be stolen. I wonder… The only answer I see at the moment is education. People need to sit through at minimum, a 2 hour crash course in protecting themselves online.
It is absolutely disgusting to see people taking advantage of the victims of Katrina and creating new victims. These people are greed driven $#!7heads and should be punished accordingly no matter what country they are in.
Len
Absolute Computers
1 Comments:
The website operator actually got back to me and says he has terminated the offending web page. Amazing. Fortunately, he wasn't on vacation or something. Now someone needs to do a full investigation on him and large companies need to adopt a fast response. (Many take 48hrs or more to investigate).
By AbsoluteRaleigh, at 3:26 PM
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