Hurricane Sandy Email Phishing Scam (Oct 31, 2012)

During Hurricane Sandy crisis, people want to help those in need. At the same time, unscrupulous criminals will try to take advantage of the disaster. They may ask you for bogus charitable donations or offer free dining coupons to those in need. Now is the time to use special scrutiny when you receive unsolicited emails. Below are screenshots of examples of fraudulent emails you may receive. Should you receive such an email and click on the URL in it, the link will take you to a fake website and attempt to infect your computer.

To protect our customers, we offer the most up-to-date protection against new spam attacks while ensuring delivery of legitimate email with real-time information from the Dell SonicWALL Global Response Intelligent Defense (GRID) Network. The GRID Network collects and analyzes millions of data points, performing rigorous testing and evaluation every day, establishing reputation scores for senders and content and identifying new threats in real-time.

Technology makes our lives easy, but it also gives criminals a possible avenue to deceive and bypass common sense. While the method may vary from email to text messages, tweets or cold calling, one thing remains the same: If you are planning to give to a nonprofit in the wake of any disaster, verify that it is legitimate. Charity evaluators like Guidestar and Charity Navigator are good ways to check that the organization you’re donating to is established and your funds will go where you intend.

If you are interested in testing your email expertise and detection skills, please check out our Dell SonicWALL phishing test .

Here are screenshots showing some of the spam e-mails we have captured using Hurricane Sandy theme:

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