Get $20 added to your account scam

Normally I am not fooled by email scams because of past mistakes, viruses (trojans), and spyware problems.  I have been a victim of password theft to my important email account and lost it for a several earth shattering hours.  Sometimes making a few mistakes helps prevent us from a major theft of our hard earned money.

Today I almost fell prey again to an email that made it through my spam mail to my inbox.  It was asking for a survey that only takes two minutes and I would get twenty bucks added to my bank account at Capital One.  I just happened to have a Capital One bank account so I thought this was legit until I looked over the URL.

Some surveys redirect to third party sites so that is common but the fact that it redirected to a Verizon site that looked to be someones personal site I became weiry.  The URL for a Capital One survey went to a Mysite.Verizon.net.  That seems strange and I would advise anyone stay far away from even clicking on this link.

Dear Customer ,

The Capital One Bank Online department kindly asks you to take part in our quick and easy 5 questions survey. In return we will credit $20.00 to your account – Just for your time!

With the information collected we can decide to direct a number of changes to improve and expand our services. The information you provide us is all non-sensitive and anonymous – No part of it is handed down to any third party.

It will be stored in our secure database for maximum 7 days while we process the results of this nationwide survey. We kindly ask you to spare two minutes of your time and take part in our online survey.

I also noticed something else “phishy” about this email.  The copyright line at the bottom said members instead of member.

Capital One Bank (USA), N.A. and Capital One, N.A., members FDIC.

One more thing noticeable about this email scam is the FROM.  It says capitalsurvey@securenet.com instead of the URL that the link points to.  I would suggest not only looking over the URL that the emails link to before filling out any personal credit information by mousing over the link (not clicking on the link).  Also, check out the reply-to and from email headers.