Monday, June 23, 2014

USPS Email Scam

USPS-Email-scam
A USPS email scam leads users to malicious computer malware.

A woman has claimed that she cant get rid of the malware that was put on her computer from a bogus U.S. Postal Service email came through.

The woman received an email with a shipping label link in it.  She clicked on the link for the shipping label and realized she may have done something wrong.  With the uneasy feeling of potentially clicking on something that isn’t trusted, she ran a computer scan and found that her device was infected with a data-stealing virus from the bogus link.

The woman said she received an email from USPS.com claiming that a package could not be delivered to her residence.

“Your parcel has arrived at May 24, 2014. Courier was unable to deliver the parcel to you,” stated the email.
“Print your label and show it in the nearest post office to get a parcel.”

The email had the link, “Print Shipping Label” to get the proper package identification, displayed at the bottom.

The real USPS email states that they do not contact customers via email if a package could not be delivered.

USPS is aware of this scam along with others like it.  They have posted a warning on their website cautioning customers about the situation.

Clicking the link activates a virus, which can steal personal information like user names, passwords, and other private data stored on your computer.

If you receive this email, delete the message and report the spam at abuse@usps.gov.

This marketing scam has already been uncovered by the Postal Inspection Service where fraudsters mask themselves as USPS employees and calling residents requesting D.O.B. along with SSN for package deliveries.

Always check suspicious emails for; poor grammar, spelling errors, funny formats, and security symbols in the url.

The email received by residents, states that a parcel has arrived “at” May 24th.  Also, the sender information on the “From” line for the email address states “donotreply?id85@kestrelgymnastics.co.uk, not a USPS.com.

It is advised for anyone who received on of these scam email to forward it to spam2uspis.gov.  Or recipients may call the postal inspection service at 1-877-876-2455.

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References:
Marquez, Homer
Fake USPS email leads to malware – MyPlainview
http://www.myplainview.com/news/article_4679a566-e6a4-11e3-b32a-001a4bcf887a.html

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