iPhone 5 hoax launched by spammers revealed by Symantec

Sep 7, 2011 09:16 GMT  ·  By

A new spamming campaign which tries to take advantage from the upcoming release of the iPhone 5 was recently discovered and presented in detail on Symantec's official blog.

The hoax at hand addresses residents of the state of California and it's just one of the many fake offers surrounding future product announcements.

Apple fans can hardly wait for the new product to be launched, especially after the immense success of the previous model. Spammers promise people they don't have to wait until the official release, sending emails with the subject “You have been selected to receive an iPhone 5.”

After clicking the link from the email, the offer behind which will supposedly run out of time soon, the user is taken to a survey page which he'll have to fill out in order to claim the prize.

Upon the completion of the fake study, asking the participants questions about the iPhone, a form page is loaded where the “happy winner” has to enter his personal information.

The only purpose of this fake promotion is to obtain email addresses which later will be bombarded with spam messages. This is fortunate because no credit card or billing information is required from those who complete the online form.

At the end of the survey, the victim is once again prompted to enter his email address to claim the device.

To make everything more credible, the spammers made a Terms and Conditions page where they list a few conditions required of participants.

Situations where a manufacturer will give out free products by using email messages are  close to none. It seems that many people have yet to learn this as they still give out personal information without a second thought to anyone who promises a prize.