Posted by Kathleen Calligan, President & CEO on September 04, 2007
The Better Business Bureau System first issued this alert February 13, 2007 and again on April 18, 2007 warning all businesses and consumers across the United States and Canada of a spoofing scam using the BBB name and a false BBB e-mail address to entice recipients to access potentially damaging hyperlinks. The hackers have continued attacking businesses across the Country by changing the email slightly, but using the same technique. The newest emails are targeted at consumers. The subject of the new attack is “Complaint filed by The false email can also be identified by a case number in the body of the text that starts with “CX” followed by a series of 9 numbers. The e-mail has a false return address of ”Business Bureaus [mailto:idtheft@bbb.org]” and a virus program in an attached Word file called “Complaint_924610736.doc” which is referred to in the body of text as being the complaint form. The emails can also be identified by lack of contact information. Legitimate BBB documents will always have contact information including phone numbers and address for the person and/or Bureau that originates the document. All recipients are advised that any e-mail from the idtheft@bbb.org address is not coming from any BBB and should be considered counterfeit. The BBB strongly encourages recipients of any such message to delete the message immediately without clicking on the attachment. The phishing e-mail return address of idtheft@bbb.org does not exist and is being "spoofed." Spoofing occurs when an e-mail address is altered to appear as if the message originated from a legitimate source. This is a common practice for both spam e-mail and phishing operations. If you are in receipt of one these emails and have incurred damage please contact Chris Hubbard at (615)250-4233 or chubbard@gobbb.org chubbard@gobbb.org. Phishing is a term coined by computer hackers, who use e-mail to fish the Internet hoping to “hook” recipients into giving them logins, passwords and/or other sensitive information. In all these scams, the phisher first impersonates a legitimate company. In a typical scam, the phisher instructs recipients to click on a convenient link to receive or provide information that can then be used by phishers to access the recipient’s sensitive personal or business information. For more information about phishing and for tips to avert other scams, please visit www.gobb.org
