Spam Gallery–Reward Notification

The Spam Gallery is a series of posts that give examples of spam messages, explaining telltales signs of how they are spam.

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This piece of mail has an interesting trait of being a forgery of another spam service.  Gift Certificate Delivery.com is probably a legitimate business, but assuredly is one that should not exist.  In any case, this email is using their email template to get you to click the links and get infected.

The email uses the first part of the email address (JSmith, jane.doe) to give it legitimacy, but a real email from a real company would use your real name.  They would have that in their database.  The other clue is that the links all direct to latestyearsvacation.info, which has nothing to do with gift certificates, rewards, or anything else.

One thing that is interesting though, is t the spammers actually purchased a valid domain name and hosting services to host their infection files.  Usually, the files would be hosted on a hacked legitimate website in a hidden folder so the spammers wouldn’t have to pay anything.

Always check the link addresses, and don’t  assume you’re getting something for free.  That’s not the way the world works.