Woolworths Scratch and Win Groceries Scam
A new take on the all too common gift voucher scam has attempted to reach inboxes as a Woolworths scratch & win groceries scam attempt. Woolworths is a popular Australian supermarket chain locally known as “Woolies”. We advise deleting this email from your inbox if received.
Figure A is an exact copy of the Woolworths scratch and win groceries scam email that was caught by MailShark spam filters. It claims you can win up to $1000 worth of grocery gift vouchers and is well branded, even including some Christmas graphics to make it relevant to the current season. It features scratch panel graphics which, if clicked, will take you to a malicious website which will attempt to infect your computer with malware. Please refer to the image for all malicious links found in this email’s content.
The subject line reads “Scratch & Win up to $1000 worth of groceries!” which is enough to get a receiver (not familiar with a gift voucher scam) to open the email. The sender is shown as “Woolwhorths” (spelling mistake included) and the email address used is clearly spam and in no way associated with the official Woolworths website. Also note the lack of personal greeting and poor grammar throughout.
Figure B is a copy of the malicious website you will land on if any links within the email are clicked. It is again, pretty well branded to suit Woolworths and pushes you to scratch the panels at the bottom of the screen. Do not click anywhere on this page – it is a trick to infect your computer with malware. Delete the email straight away and close the webpage.
If you feel you may be at risk of an infection from this email scam run your anti-virus and / or anti-malware software immediately. Gift voucher scams are all too common, and this attempt is the same, they have just taken a new approach in the hopes to catch you off guard. Once again, the best safety measure you can take is to delete this email without opening it!
Steph Kent
MailShark
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