Is Your Ecommerce Site's New Newsletter Subscriber A Phisher?

[mandy]

Phishers and spammers are getting more creative in using copy and creatives hijacked from legitimate web sites, including online retail sites, to con consumers into divulging sensitive information such as account numbers...

The purloined material gives phishers’ and spammers’ e-mails the appearance of legitimacy, and many consumers respond thinking they’re dealing with the actual retailer. That enables the crook to validate the e-mail address for use in a later scam or embed technology on the consumer’s computer that captures keystrokes or other important data that can be used in identity theft or other types of fraud, Buck says.

One method used by crooks is to subscribe to a retailer’s e-mail newsletter. “The first e-mail that comes to them has a whole bunch of important information for the phisher or spammer to use,” he says. That includes all the content in the retailer’s newsletter, commercials and advertising as well as legitimate header information, such as domain addresses...

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=21887