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Despite the summer being a season for vacations, the crooks out there are hardly resting while developing new schemes to take money from your wallet. Here is the latest making the rounds:
Best Buy Needs To Verify Your Order...
This one arrives in your e-mail box, ostensibly from Best Buy's credit verification department. It's scary looking:
BestBuy Order #1095619. Fraud Alert.
Dear customer,
Recently we have received an order made by using your personal credit card information.
This order was made online at our official BestBuy website on 06/17/2003. Our Fraud Department has some suspicions regarding this order and we need you to visit a special Fraud Department page at our web store where you can confirm or decline this transaction by providing us with the correct information.
This e-mail address has been taken from National Credit Bureau.
Click the link below to visit a special Fraud Department page to resolve the cause of the problem.
=====================================================================
ORDER# 1095619 - STATUS: SUSPENDED
ITEMS PURCHASED
=====================================================================
Item No: 73890
CDA-9815 In-Dash CD Player/Ai-Changer Controller
Price: $387.65 Qty: 2 Total: $775.3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The order listed above has not yet been processed.
The reason for the delay in processing your order is:
- UNVERIFIED SHIPPING ADDRESS
- Information provided:
Shipping
41 WINHAM ST
Staten Island, NY 10306
United States
phone# 206-337-9843
In our effort to deter fraudulent transactions, we need your help in
providing us with the correct information. Your prompt response is needed
to avoid any unauthorized charges to your credit card.
=====================================================================
Click the link below to visit a special Fraud Department page to resolve the cause of the problem.
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At first glance, the message looks authentic enough, especially with the link that appears to take you to Best Buy's own website to "resolve the problem." But upon closer inspection, the only thing the people behind this e-mail want to resolve is how much of your money they are going to get.
First giveaway is the e-mail address attached to the From: line (not reproduced here), which comes from a random e-mail address, typically obtained from one of several thousand free web-based e-mail accounts. If the message was really from Best Buy, it would have come from a bestbuy.com e-mail address, and this did not.
Second was the link attached to the e-mail (also not shows here). Although the clickable link said it would take you to the bestbuy.com web site, if you used your e-mail program's "view source" option, you would discover the link actually went to another site (digitalgamma.com in the case of the message I received).
Thirdly, no company would waste time contacting you over an order as patently fraudulent as this. The shipping address specified claims a New York address but the telephone number says Seattle. Web sites get fraudulent orders all of the time. Most
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