Interesting Solar Rebate Email Scam

Interesting Solar Rebate Email Scam

The following solar rebate branded email scam uses an interesting tactic to infect your computer with malware. It is branded as a Solar Market email. Solar Market is an Australian solar power installer quoting website.

Figure A shows the email in question. It is very well branded and is an extremely convincing attempt at a legitimate email offer – we imagine they have based their design on one of Solar Market’s existing emails. The subject line reads “Solar Rebate $4k for Australian home owners” which suits the contents of the email correctly. The sender is shown as “Solar Rebate” but the email address is in no way associated with the official Solar Market website and is clearly spam.

Some other points to consider with this email scam attempt:

• Lack of personal greeting
• Malicious links (you can see a link’s destination by hovering over it with your mouse)
• Why are you receiving this email? (It is unlikely you signed up to receive email marketing from the company)

Figure B shows the most interesting part about this email scam. It is a website faking a Windows blue screen error. It is a tactic MailShark have not noticed before but, be warned the risk of a malware infection is as dangerous as ever. Do not click anywhere on this page and delete the email immediately.

Email scams are constantly creating new strategies and tactics to trick you into opening and clicking through to a malicious website. If you are ever in doubt delete the email immediately.

Steph Kent
MailShark
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