Play.com customers at risk from phishing

Play.com, one of the biggest UK online retailers, has its share of scammers that try to lure users searching for a bargain and scam them out of their hard earned money.

Play – which is very much like Amazon and eBay and has the same option of rating sellers – is able to identify and push out scammy sellers only after they receive a bevy of lousy ratings for failing to deliver the goods.

But its not the £2 DVDs that earn the scammers enough money to make their efforts worth while. What usually happens is that the buyer receives an e-mail similar to this:

With “Problem with payment/order” in the subject line, the scammers try to trick users into sending them personal and credit card information that will allow them to steal more money from the buyers or sell that information to other crooks.

According to GFI, this particular letter tries to convince the user to fill out “the following secure form” by clicking on the reply button and filling in the black spaces. But what should immediately strike the potential victim as suspicious is the fact that there is no actual form to fill out, and that the sending of the details in plain text format cannot actually be secure if sent via e-mail.

Of course, some users are not aware of any of these things, and some might not be sure about their scam detection skills. That’s why it is always a good idea to pick up the phone, find and directly dial the service’s number (never the one offered in the e-mail) and ask them for advice.