STORES Magazine - January 2009 - (Page 76)

LPINFORMATION / ONLINE FRAUD The Hook Line’s a Stinker ID thieves luring consumers with promise of easy money BY DAVID P. SCHULZ he e-mail looks enticing. Right there in the subject f i e l d a re t he words : “Wal*Mart 1,000 Dollar Gift Card Inside.” The only message is a URL link. T Another e-mail, this one from walmart@survey.com, promises to reward signs with current and former clients, the recipient with $150 for completing a Bach could not say whether Survey.com short survey. Neither is legitimate. has worked with Wal-Mart. He did say, A host of familiar corporate names are however, that “even a company as big as used in what prove to be fraud, scamWal-Mart” wouldn’t pay $150 for a ming, spoofing and phishing expediminute or so of the consumer’s time. tions perpetrated by potential identity “Even Wal-Mart couldn’t pay for inthieves. centivation like that,” he says. “The size “Wal-Mart would never do something of the incentive should have been a tiplike this,” spokeswoman Anna Taylor off.” says, referring to the survey e-mail. “We Bach himself has received e-mails purdon’t do consumer research like this.” porting to be from eBay and PayPal that While she hadn’t heard about this parwere not legitimate, and his company ticular ruse, Taylor was aware that Walhas received telephone calls and e-mails Mart’s name has been used in other from people seeking payment for particscams. ipating in surveys. Survey.com is a legitimate research outfit located in San Jose, Calif.: its webSeasonal spamming site notes that the company “provides “When they provided us with details, dedicated customer support to fulfill all we had to tell them that, unfortunately, your research needs.” it was not one of ours. It was a phony “We’ve never done anything like that,” survey,” Bach says. It’s unfortunate, he Michael Bach, founder and chief execusays, but “sometimes people are not as tive of Survey.com, says upon being told aware as they should be. They should be of the bogus e-mail solicitation using his more leery.” company’s domain as a reSpam volume rises in the turn address for a purported winter months because “at Wal-Mart survey. “It’s not this time of year there is an increase in legitimate e-mail something we’ve ever been of all e-mail involved with.” holiday offers,” says Dermot Because of the confidenHarnett, an anti-spam expert messages tiality and non-disclosure with Symantec. He estimates are spam agreements his company that “76.4 percent of all e- mail messages are spam.” In the e-mail that offered the $1,000 Wal-Mart gift card, one recipient was reluctant to use the link embedded in the message, feeling that there could have been a virus or some other malware involved. When it was eventually tested, a dialog box indicated that the page could not be found. A subsequent check found that the URL, livelongandbestrong.com, is on several lists of expired and deleted domain names. Fraud tip-offs The caution was not ill-taken, however, as the message had a few clues as to its veracity. The subject line message raises eyebrows because the word “dollar” is spelled out – an indication that the dollar sign may not have been available on the foreign keyboard used to type the message, and/or the writer was unfamiliar with inserting symbols. Consumer watchdogs and law enforcement authorities are aware of the scams; several websites warn consumers about the use of Wal-Mart’s name in online scams. StORES David P. Schulz, a New York-based writer and editor, reports on U.S. and foreign retailers for several publications. WWW.STORES.ORG 76.4% 76 STORES / JANUARY 2009 http://www.Survey.com http://www.Survey.com http://www.Survey.com http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - January 2009

STORES Magazine - Jauary 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Mechanical Marvel P&G Invests in Ocado Now I Remember What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Breaking the Monotony Multi-Channel Concept2Watch E-Commerce Analytics Category Management IT Systems In-Store Technology IT Systems Communications Website Strategy Communications SOA Energy Video Surveillance Employee Theft Online Fraud Industry Perspective Loeb Retail Letter ARTS Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword End Cap

STORES Magazine - January 2009

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.