December 12th, 2010

Shopping.com Merchants targeted by Phishing Attempt

It’s worth passing on a warning that we saw earlier today from one of the biggest Comparison Shopping Engines, Shopping.com.

They were alerted today of an email phishing scam targeting some sellers on other Shopping.com markets with the subject line “Important NOTICE: Registration Suspension”.

This email is NOT from Shopping.com. The login page that you are being redirected to, as well as the email address that it has come from are also NOT part of Shopping.com

As a precautionary measure they are alerting all of our clients. Don’t become a victim of phishing, in which a fake site that mimics a legitimate site is set up to harvest login credentials. By following the tips below, you can avoid such a scam:

Be on alert of wording in emails that require urgent action, confirmation or information about a transaction.

Always view the webpage address you are on especially when clicked directly from an email.

Opt to manually type in a webpage address or use a bookmark.

Upgrade your browser version and enable the anti-phishing feature.

Remember, legitimate online services will not ask you for sensitive information via email.

All very sensible advice. At this time of year, these scams multiply to cover comparison sites, Google Adwords accounts, Affiliate marketing accounts etc, not to mention the usual fake bank notices.

At a pressurised time for e-tailers the temptation to click on a link from a genuinely good fake is easy to do – but take the extra bit of time to log in on what you know is the real page, saved from a bookmark or a typed in address. We have seen horrible things happen when advertising accounts are compromised so we hope that this does not happen to you.