The email purports to include a “Customer Satisfaction Survey” from Woolworths claims that the recipient can receive a $50 gift certificate just for clicking a link and participating in a short 5 question survey.
However, the email is not from Woolworths and the claim that recipients will be given a $50 gift certificate for filling in a survey is untrue. In fact, according to Hoax-Slayer’s Brett Chistensen , the message is a phishing scam designed to trick recipients into divulging sensitive personal and financial information to Internet criminals.
Those who participate will certainly not receive a $50 gift certificate or any other reward. Those who are taken in by the trick and click the link in the email will be taken to a bogus survey page.
The fraudulent website starts off by asking respondents some generic questions about their satisfaction with Woolworths services. According to Hoax-Slayer’s investigation, this supposed customer survey is just the smoke screen designed to fool participants into providing their personal and financial details, ostensibly so that they can be credited with their $50 reward. The second part of the scam page asks for name and address details as well as ID information such as drivers license and Medicare numbers. It then asks users to submit credit card details, including the card’s CVV.
All of this personal and financial information will be sent to the criminals running this scam campaign and may subsequently be used to commit identity theft and credit card fraud.
Such survey based phishing scams are becoming quite common and have targeted customers of various other high profile companies around the world including, McDonald’s, Coca Cola and Wespac. Companies may sometimes conduct customer surveys that offer rewards to participants such as the chance to go in the draw for a prize. In some cases, participants may receive small fees or other types of minor rewards for offering their opinions and feedback to companies. However, companies are extremely unlikely to pay a substantial cash reward for each and every customer willing to fill in an inconsequential survey consisting of just a few generic questions. Nor would any legitimate company expect customers to provide sensitive personal and financial details via an unsecure web form.
Hoax-Slayer warns viewers to be cautious of any unsolicited email or text message that claims that you can receive a prize or reward just for participating in a brief survey. If you receive such a message, do not follow any links that it contains. Some versions may package the bogus survey form as an email attachment, so do not open any attachments that such messages contain. Facebook users are also being continually targeted in similar types of scams that offer valuable ( but non-existent) prizes as bait for survey participants.
