Phishing, it’s a part of everyday internet activity. As long as there are usernames and passwords, there will be scum attempting to hijack that sensitive information from unsuspecting users. The PlayStation Network is no different, and a new scheme has come to light where a site has been designed to look just like an official PlayStation website offering a chance to win “FIFA11” for the “Playstation3”, but with the sole purpose of extracting your PSN sign-in IDs and passwords.
Though this scam is extremely easy to catch, we wanted to help those of you who are more wide-eyed than keen-eyed with this public service announcement.
This morning an email arrived in our inbox from playstation@playstationnetwork.8m.com, which was our first red flag. All official PlayStation Network emails come from PlayStation_Network@playstation.sony.com.
The second glaring red flag was the fact that the email was in plain text, rather than some fancy graphic the designers at PlayStation cooked up.
The email was for an “exclusive copy of FIFA11 for the PS3”. The email itself is where the scammers get sloppy. To win, “All you have to do is join our last contest”. The last contest? From PlayStation? I highly doubt it. I’m sure the scammer meant “latest” but hit the wrong button on his spell checker (scammers are a lot stupider than they assume we are).
The next, and what might be the most blatant issue of all is the copyright at the footer of the email. It clearly reads:
© Playstation3. All rights reserved
The S in PlayStation is always capitalized. Not only that. The PlayStation 3 couldn’t own the copyright to anything. It would be Sony Computer Entertainment that would hold the copyright.
You might be thinking, with all these glaring mistakes and issues, any idiot should be able to see that this is a scam. However, if someone doesn’t read the email, and instead clicks the link, the site they’re brought to is strikingly similar to UK’s official PlayStation website. On the website (pictured below), it asks for your PSN sign in ID and your password, along with asking what your favorite Soccer team is.
Sadly, even though the red flags are waiving all over the place, there is going to be a handful of poor chaps that will enter their info here, and likely have their account hijacked.
You’ve been warned…
