Spammers Celebrate with Father’s Day Early

Spammers waste no time in exploiting every means to achieve their aim. Even before Father’s Day arrives, spammers already spring into action. Spam mail leading to a spoof website is used to harvest victims’ emails. Users are advised to be extra careful when receiving emails from unknown sources.

by Merianne Polintan (Anti-spam Research Engineer)

Father’s Day is a tradition meant for us to show our appreciation for fathers. With the fast changing technology however, people, spammers especially, follow the trend and celebrate the occasion in their own way.

Clicking the link in the spam message displays a website that seems to be for the mattress vendor, Tempur-Pedic. It invites users to avail a free Night-Time Renewal kit with DVD.

To do so however, requires the user to enter their first name, last name, and email address. Asking for such information wouldn’t be alarming if the website is the legitimate website for Tempur-pedic, which closer inspection reveals, it is not. The website is a spoofed version of the real website, whose URL is www.tempurpedic.com. The spam run is simply a ploy to harvest email addresses to sell, or send spam messages to.

The spam message and spoof website are already blocked by the Smart Protection Network.

Comments

[jillian]

Hi Merianne -

I work with the advertising agency handling Tempur-Pedic's online marketing campaign. I would like to take a closer look at this email to track down the source on behalf of the client. We take the client's online integrity very seriously. Could you possibly forward a copy of this email over to me? My personal email address is jillian (dot) tate (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks so much!@

-Jillian Tate