Phishing in the Form 470 Ocean

Just a bit of warning.  Some phisher is sending out emails to all the email addresses that were on Form 470s last fall.  Here is the text:

As part of our security measures, we deliver appropriate monitoring of transactions and customers to identify potentially unusual or suspicious activity and transactions in the American Express online system.

Please review the "Suspicious Activity Report" document attached to this email.

Your Cardmember information is included in the upper-right corner of this document to help you recognize this as a customer service e-mail from American Express. To learn more about e-mail security or report a suspicious e-mail, please visit us at http://www.americanexpress.com/phishing

Thank you for your Cardmembership.

Sincerely,

Grace_Saunders

Tier III Support

American Express Account Security

Fraud Prevention and Detection Network

  

Copyright 2012 American Express Company. All rights reserved.

The message comes with a ZIP file, which contains the virus PSW.Fareit.A.Trojan.  According to Microsoft, "PWS:Win32/Fareit.A is a trojan that steals sensitive information from the affected user's computer and sends it to a remote attacker."  So if you clicked on the ZIP file, you had better start drastic action.

Now all the email addresses from 2012's Forms 470 have fallen into the hands of people spreading viruses.

I'll take this opportunity to repeat my call for a new Form 470 that does not allow spammers to download a file with a list of names and email addresses from every 470 in the country.  And, of course, repeat my opinion that the FCC should bow out of trying to force their vision of competitive bidding onto applicants' purchasing processes.