{"id":19455,"date":"2011-04-01T13:04:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T11:04:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-04-01T13:04:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T11:04:00","slug":"beware-coca-cola-sms-and-e-mail-phishing-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/19455-beware-coca-cola-sms-and-e-mail-phishing-scams.html","title":{"rendered":"Beware Coca-Cola SMS and e-mail phishing scams"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peninsula Beverage Company (PenBev), local bottler of The Coca-Cola Company’s products, are warning customers not to get caught by a number of phishing scams which they say fraudulently incorporated the Coca-Cola name.<\/p>\n

They warned the public to be vigilant when it comes to receiving a short message service (SMS) or e-mail messages from individuals claiming they are from Coca-Cola and that they have won money in lotteries.<\/p>\n

Spokesperson for PenBev, Denise Green, has confirmed that “Coca-Cola South Africa is a recent target, where Coca-Cola’s different brands and trademarks are being used without permission.” <\/p>\n

“Coca-Cola South Africa is in no way associated with any SMSes or emails requesting sensitive information in order to redeem a prize,” Green reiterated. “Coca-Cola will never ask for confidential information such as your identification number or banking account details. We urge the public not to give out any of these details”<\/p>\n

Phishing fraudsters attempt to develop relationships with victims to obtain personal and financial information, PenBev explained.<\/p>\n

They provided the following list of common signs that an email or SMS message may be a part of a phishing scam:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Improper or unauthorized use of company trademarks; e.g. “World Coca-Cola Award Winner”, “The Coca-Cola Company Official Prize Notification”, “The Coca-Cola Mobile Draw,” “2011 Coca-Cola Promotion” or other similar titles;<\/li>\n
  2. Spelling and grammatical errors in the email;<\/li>\n
  3. Sender’s use of free, non-corporate email accounts (such as Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL and Hotmail);<\/li>\n
  4. Requests for personal information such as identification numbers or banking account numbers;<\/li>\n
  5. Promise of quick financial gain if such personal data is provided;<\/li>\n
  6. Official appearance including letterhead from a financial institution or the Company; and<\/li>\n
  7. Photos of Company executives, secret pin codes or reference ticket number with contact information for a Coca-Cola representative.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you think you have fallen prey to a phishing scam the first step is to immediately discontinue all communication with the source and report it to the authorities.<\/p>\n

    Beware Coca-Cola SMS and e-mail phishing scams<\/strong> << Comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Coca-Cola's local bottler is warning of phishing scams making use of Coca-Cola's name to trick people into giving up personal and financial information<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19455"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}