Social Security Warns of New Breed of Scams
Contra Costa Times (CA) (12/29/06); Richman, Josh
The Social Security Administration has issued a warning about a number of scams that aim to trick people, particularly senior citizens, into divulging their personal information. In one of these scams, a caller claiming to be from the administration says that the agency had suffered a power outage and needed to verify the person's personal information, such as Social Security number and date of birth. In another scam, a caller posed as an employee of the Social Security Administration and said that he needed to verify the person's direct-deposit information. In addition to the telephone scams, the Social Security Administration is warning consumers to be wary of e-mails that say they will lose their benefits or not get their annual cost-of-living increase next month unless they verify their personal information. Officials at the Social Security Administration are reminding consumers to never provide their Social Security numbers or other personal information over the Internet or the phone unless they initiated the contact and are sure they are really dealing with the government.
Spam Hidden in Email Newsletters
Dark Reading (01/16/07); Higgins, Kelly Jackson
Spam has evolved once again--this time to look like legitimate newsletters or e-advertisements from popular Web sites. Some of the mimicked sites include the NFL, Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, eBay, ESPN, US Airways, Verizon, Kohls, and 1-800-Flowers. When users open the fake newsletter or ad, the content within appears legitimate until a spam message pops up after a few seconds. "One of our researchers calls this 'wait and switch,' where it appears you are looking at a newsletter, but then another [item] appears a few seconds later," explains Doug Bowers, senior director of anti-abuse engineering at Symantec. Bowers says that so far no malware has been found in the pop-up newsletter spam, but that is something that continues to be monitored. The spammers are using a combination of techniques to sneak past spam filters, including the use of templates that duplicate the specific format of legitimate newsletters or e-advertisements, says Bowers. Anti-spam software will need to improve in order to prevent these fake newsletters from becoming a hazard. Staying abreast of the latest scams and using strong spam filtering software are the two best defenses against this new threat, says Bowers.
