Fake fast food survey with cash reward leads to phishing site

Scammers often use the familiarity of a brand as a means of lessening the victims’ tendency to be cautious when perusing unsolicited emails. In this latest email scam, this method is coupled with the offer of $80 to whomever takes a short survey.

The email supposedly comes from a globally well-known fast food chain, and claims that the company is planning major changes to the establishments in order to improve the quality of service.

In order to do so, they are asking the customers to fill out a survey and they offer the cash as incentive. Symantec reports that to access the survey, the victims are encouraged to follow the link in the email, which will then take them to a bogus page ostensibly belonging to the company.

After the survey is completed, the victims are redirected to a fake fake user authentication page where they are asked to enter their name, email address, card number, expiration date, verification number and PIN, in order to get the money:

As you have probably guessed it already, the survey is fake, and the page is a phishing page. If you have fallen for the scam, it’s imperative that you get your credit card cancelled as soon as possible.

Here are some tips to avoid falling prey to these type of scams:

• Don’t follow suspicious links in unsolicited email massages
• Have a critical look at the URL in the link – does it look like a domain a big company would use? Enter the name on the company in a search engine – chances are their official page will be among the top search results and you can compare the two URLs
• Keep your security software updated
• Remember: if an offer sounds to good to be true, chances are good it’s a scam.