Over the past few weeks, I’ve received a serious flood of similar email messages that claim to be from well-known businesses like Harbor Freight, CVS, Kroger, Marriot, Costco, FedEx, Walmart, and even Cheesecake Factory. They often come in pairs, one to each of my two most-used email addresses. They all have a common theme: Something free is waiting for you; click here and claim it! Sometimes it’s customer points that were lost, for FedEx they apologize for losing your package, and offer gifts as recompense.
I’ve gotten as many as 150 of these in a single day. Fewer show up on weekends, and there was a week awhile back when they abruptly stopped coming, only to resume the following week.
I know they’re fake because the From address domain is never the domain of the business proper, but something silly like “goonads.com”. Furthermore, as best I can tell, the From domain is used once and never again. (I get two identical copies of each because two of my emails are on their list.)
The emails are often decorated with graphics copied from the supposed sender’s site to make them look legit. And there is only one URL embedded in any of them, labeled as “Click here to claim your gift” or “Click here to enter your delivery address” etc. No, I haven’t clicked on any of those bogus domains. There are well-known hazards in doing so. I’m posting here mainly to see if this is happening to any of my readers. Researching things like this online shows them going back several years, but mine started maybe 5 or 6 weeks ago.
So. Anybody else getting rained on with scammy free gift offers? Drop a comment below.
