14 DAY TRIAL // Would you pay $900 (730 EUR) to take part in discussions on business strategies and ideas? If you did, you should be on the lookout for spam emails that advertise the Product Development Summits.
Here’s how these emails look like:
Hi [recipient name], hope all is well. On behalf of our Board, I wanted to personally invite you into The Product Development Summit because of your key role and experience.
The Product Development Summits is an invitation-only group comprised of the very best Product Development executives and visionaries. We meet by Teleconference to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful Product Development leaders whose only agenda is to help each other outperform.
I am certain you will find this experience both enjoyable and useful in your efforts. Please take a look and let me know of your decision or relay if you think another is more appropriate.
GFI Software researcher Chris Boyd has come across one of these notifications and he claims that they should be ignored.
Why? Well, first of all, this seems to be part of an older, larger scheme that has been doing the rounds for years, every once in a while popping up under a different name, such as the CIO Summit, or the CMO Summit.
Furthermore, during the signup process, the customer is requested to provide all sorts of information, including banking details, all of which is sent back to the site via an unsecure connection. Apparently, a secure connection does exists, but for some reason it’s not the default one.
This is not the first time when experts advise users to avoid such offers. Back in July, MX Lab researchers were warning internauts to steer clear of the World Trade Register and other similar companies.