Halloween spam tries to spirit away personal information

IT security and control firm Sophos has intercepted an attempt by spammers to hijack Halloween festivities to grab personal information from innocent internet users. Sophos has identified a spam email campaign that tries to lure recipients into handing over a wide range of personal information with the promise of a gift voucher worth USD 250. The email uses a variety of painful puns associated with the spooky celebrations on 31 October:

A $250 MasterCard Gift Card-there’s nothing scary about that! (Participation required. See below for details.)

Instead of running away, take advantage of your Halloween gift card and click below! (See offer for details.)

Clicking on links contained in the email takes computer users to a website containing Halloween imagery. The website asks for a large amount of personal information including email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers and date of birth, before presenting a stream of questionnaires on subjects as diverse as student loans, gender and cigarette smoking.