Holiday scams

[Lsbcal]

I ordered an electronic item from Walmart yesterday and got a quick confirm in my Yahoo mail. Today an email appears in my inbox saying "you left something in your your shopping cart at Walmart .com". It looks like it is from Walmart if you don't look too closely at the link URL's and it has an attachment too (which I have not viewed).

Of course, my spam antenna went up. So I did the safe thing of going to my cart at Walmart .com through the google link i.e. without clicking anything on the email. Of course, there was nothing in the cart.

What made this seem real was that this did not go to my spam folder but into my inbox and it was so close to my actual interaction with Walmart. Yahoo is pretty good nowadays at removing spam. Maybe it avoided the Yahoo spam filter partly because I had a legitimate Walmart email recently? I'm just guessing on that.

Anyway just a new reminder to avoid clicking on those email links unless you really really know they are for real.

[easysurfer]

Nice catch.

The crooks know that lots of folks are online shopping around the holidays and if one's radar wasn't up, I could easily see one thinking the spam was communication on the sale.

[Beldar]

This happened to me about 2 weeks ago when I ordered an item from The Vitamin Shoppe... I didn't click on the link but instead went directly to the vendor's web site and verified that my "cart" was empty.

I wonder how they snagged that info?


_B

[Lsbcal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beldar This happened to me about 2 weeks ago when I ordered an item from The Vitamin Shoppe... I didn't click on the link but instead went directly to the vendor's web site and verified that my "cart" was empty. I wonder how they snagged that info? ...

I wonder if it's possible to get the from-to ip addresses from a router that is in the sending chain?

[MichaelB]

It wouldn't surprise me if scammers were sending out millions of emails, trying the same approach, just altering the retailers. Some people will always click.

[Lsbcal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelB It wouldn't surprise me if scammers were sending out millions of emails, trying the same approach, just altering the retailers. Some people will always click.

This is the standard procedure.

However, in my case the Walmart related spam came in right after my actual transaction with the real Walmart. It is suspicious in its timing although could be just a coincidence. My Yahoo spam folder has 814 spam emails in it. I checked over the last week and there was no other Walmart like spam. Unfortunately, it appears one cannot do a search of the spam folder in Yahoo mail so I cannot easily go further with this analysis.

Beldar seems to have had a similar issue with an entity that is not as widely used as Walmart.

[MichaelB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lsbcal This is the standard procedure. However, in my case the Walmart related spam came in right after my actual transaction with the real Walmart. It is suspicious in its timing although could be just a coincidence. My Yahoo spam folder has 814 spam emails in it. I checked over the last week and there was no other Walmart like spam. Unfortunately, it appears one cannot do a search of the spam folder in Yahoo mail so I cannot easily go further with this analysis. Beldar seems to have had a similar issue with an entity that is not as widely used as Walmart.

I see your point. Perhaps inform Walmart online tech support?

[Lsbcal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelB I see your point. Perhaps inform Walmart online tech support?

I did look this up at the Walmart site. It seemed that Walmart redirected people to some government site for phishing type scams. They've got to make this easier before I will spend more time on this.