23 May 2008

Companies warned on disaster donation phishing e-mails

Antony Savvas

Spam & Phishing Companies are being warned about a number of phishing scams focusing on donation appeals for the recent major disasters in Burma and China.

"There are a number of requests for companies to donate funds to disaster relief organisations being sent via e-mail," said David Hobson, managing director of security firm GSS.

"Unfortunately, most of these e-mail appeals are actually phishing requests, which means that anyone donating via the suggested websites may find themselves asked for a variety of personal and/or company information, which could be used for identity theft," he said.

The situation is so bad about the phishing e-mails that the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team has just issued a warning about the e-mail appeals.

This article first appeared on the web-site of Computer Weekly, at
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/05/23/230789/companies-warned-on-disaster-donation-phishing-e-mails.htm © Reed Business Information 2008.

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