|
hope this helps...this is from snopes...
Claim: Best Buy needs you to submit your credit card information to confirm a possibly fraudulent transaction.
Status: False.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2003]
BestBuy Order #1095619. Fraud Alert.
Dear customer,
Recently we have received an order made by using your personal credit card information.
This order was made online at our official BestBuy website on 06/17/2003. Our Fraud Department has some suspicions regarding this order and we need you to visit a special Fraud Department page at our web store where you can confirm or decline this transaction by providing us with the correct information.
This e-mail address has been taken from National Credit Bureau.
Click the link below to visit a special Fraud Department page to resolve the cause of the problem.
=====================================================================
ORDER# 1095619 - STATUS: SUSPENDED
ITEMS PURCHASED
=====================================================================
Item No: 73890
CDA-9815 In-Dash CD Player/Ai-Changer Controller
Price: $387.65 Qty: 2 Total: $775.3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The order listed above has not yet been processed.
The reason for the delay in processing your order is:
- UNVERIFIED SHIPPING ADDRESS
- Information provided:
Shipping
41 WINHAM ST
Staten Island, NY 10306
United States
phone# 206-337-9843
In our effort to deter fraudulent transactions, we need your help in
providing us with the correct information. Your prompt response is needed
to avoid any unauthorized charges to your credit card.
=====================================================================
Click the link below to visit a special Fraud Department page to resolve
the cause of the problem.
Origins: Like
the PayPal scam, this message is a trap set to lure the unwary into disclosing their credit card information to strangers who would like to put that information to profitable (and illegal) use.
This scam comes in the guise of a message supposedly mailed out by Best Buy, the giant retail electronics chain, claiming that the recipient's credit card has been used for an on-line purchase of merchandise to be shipped to an unverified address. (Most merchants will not ship an order placed over the phone or via the web to an address other than the one listed as the customer's billing address in the credit card issuer's records, unless the purchaser provides additional proof of identity. This stops credit card thieves from ordering piles of merchandise and having it shipped elsewhere, leaving the credit card holder completely unaware that his card or number is in the hands of crooks until it's too late.)
Of course, Best Buy has nothing to do with the sending out of this warning, and the information about an unauthorized charge is false. The message is bait intended to lure the reader into clicking the provided link, which takes the reader not to Best Buy's site, but to a faux Best Buy page on a completely different site which asks the user to input his credit card number and other personal information. Information thus entered can then be harvested by the scammers to use for all sorts of illicit transactions.
The giveaways to this scam are that:
There is no such organization as the "National Credit Bureau."
The major national credit bureaus (Equifax, Trans Union and Experian) do not maintain databases of e-mail addresses which they provide to merchants to help validate transactions. A merchant needing to verify a credit card transaction would contact the financial institution that issued the card in order to obtain more information.
The link embedded in the message does not take the user to a "special Fraud Department page" on Best Buy's site, but to a page hosted under a completely different domain name (such as digitalgamma.com or your-instant-credit-reporter.org)
The message did not issue from an "@bestbuy.com" address.
Last updated: 18 June 2003
__________________
"We were wrong, terribly wrong. (We) should not have tried to fight a guerrilla war with conventional military tactics against a foe willing to absorb enormous casualties...in a country lacking the fundamental political stability necessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations. It could not be done and it was not done."
- Robert S. McNamara
-----------------------------------------
"We will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches...
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles."
- Eugene McCarthy in "Vietnam Message"
-----------------------------------------
never wrestle with a pig.
you both get dirty;
the pig likes it.
|