TestitandKeepit free ipad scam

This email came to me through a church discussion board so I don't have any headers. It's a nice looking website that requests email account and password info to sign up for their "program".
I wonder what they'll do with that information? I hope by posting it here this thread might show up in Google searches. Has anyone else received this?


Hello ,

Your contact "\\*************\\" invited you to join our TestitandKeepit program.


At this time we are actively searching for people who will be willing to test the new Apple iPad. The testing period will take only two months, after which you may keep it as compensation.

To see more details and register to our program, follow the link below:

http://www.testitandkeepit.com/1

Thanks,


The TestitandKeepit Team

yes, i just got the same message and am suspicious. is it legit?
=====
Hello [*******],

Your contact "\\[email protected]\\" invited you to join our TestitandKeepit program.

At this time we are actively searching for people who will be willing to test the new Apple iPad. The testing period will take only two months, after which you may keep it as compensation.

To see more details and register to our program, follow the link below:

http://www.testitandkeepit.com/1

Thanks,

The TestitandKeepit Team

___

This message was intended for [username]@gmail.com.

TestitandKeepit.com, 98 Springgate rd, Toronto, ON, Canada

No, it's not legitimate. It is another way of phishing for your email account/password information. From there they take all of your contact info from your address book, and spam all of them in your name. Then all of the names and addresses collected are sold and used by spammers for even more spam!

From this site:
http://www.thelampnyc.org/2010/03/26/how-i-unwittingly-spammed-everyone-i-know/

How I (unwittingly) spammed everyone I know

March 26th, 2010 by The Lamp

I consider myself to be a fairly well-educated, well-informed person, especially when it comes to issues of digital literacy. So, it is with great embarrassment that I confess to having accidentally spammed pretty much everyone I know.

Yesterday I received an email from a source who shall go unnamed–but who I also consider to be a very well-informed, level-headed individual–inviting me to be a beta tester for the Apple iPad through a program where I would be given an iPad to test. After two months of submitting reviews and feedback, the iPad would be mine to keep as compensation for my time. My first thought should have been that nothing in life is free, especially newly-released pieces of cutting edge technology. Instead I thought about how great it would be for The LAMP to have an iPad to use in workshops (corny, but true). And, since the email came from someone whom I respect a great deal, I followed the link and checked out the company, TestitandKeepit.com. It appeared to be completely legitimate, as I clicked through links with the company’s purpose, contact information and testimonials from people who had tested products from them. I went ahead and started the process of registering to beta-test the iPad.

At this point, I hadn’t done anything wrong. The only person I put at risk was myself, by giving my email address and name to the company. But, at Step 2, you are asked to provide the company access to your address book, so they can send emails to everyone you know and invite them to participate. And this is where I was just plain stupid, thinking they would show me a list of contacts in my address book and I would choose which people I wanted to receive the email. After all, the company doesn’t want to be accused of spamming, right? They only want to contact people who might be interested, right?

No. They sent automated emails to everyone in my address book, citing my email address. Think of all the people whose emails you have stored in your account, and that’s a lot. My book includes friends, family, business contacts and people I may have only emailed once or twice, and I had just given all of their email addresses to TestitandKeepit.com. Plus, it made my folly all the more public. The kicker was when I went on to the third and final step required to complete registration, and got an error message that the page did not exist. This is not a good sign.

Suffice it to say, this is all extremely embarrassing, but I’m sharing it as an example of how easy it is to be taken in by a spamming/phishing operation. I take only a little comfort in evidence that the spam industry continues to grow despite various education and security efforts. I thought I knew better. Apparently not.

To anyone from my address book who may be reading this…sorry.

I think this site gives a pretty good run down of what's going on.

http://www.jazzsequence.com/geek-of-tec ... keepitcom/

Your chances of getting an i-pod are nil, but your chances of getting a ton of spam, and causing your friends to get the same, is 100%.

I'd also be concerned that, if at some stage of the procedure you have to give your telephone number, you'll get the free Florida holiday call, where they try to get your card details and then max it out.

If a stranger calls, never give any information. I always answer the phone 'Hello' and I'll soon discover if they know me, and if they don't, I don't tell them.

Oops I got beaten to it - but the same conclusion from a different source.

Any request for you to divulge your password is a scam.

It never occurred to me that this might be legitimate. If these guys are harvesting email account passwords couldn't they be doing a lot worse things than spamming all the contacts?

What I find especially puzzling is that the kid whose email address was used to send this spam didn't think it was a big deal to have given out his account password. I'm beginning to think anyone getting access to the internet should receive training and testing at least as rigorous as that given to new drivers.

If I briefly describe the Florida holiday scam it'll give you an idea how this can turn into a very shady business.

There are many ways used by marketing companies to collect people's details. Many sites offer money off coupons and they insist you enter personal details including your phone number. They also have booths at country fairs, race meetings or exhibitions with entries to a free competition for a holiday (of course, there's no holiday). They then sell these details on to a boiler room with one purpose only - to get your credit card details. They ring up telling you that you've won a holiday and that you just need to pay some small deposit, and it's pressure tactics that you wouldn't believe. They then clear your account.

It isn't just spamming.

I'm creating an email account specially for them. With an addressbook full of scammers and bogus addresses.

I was tempted to do just that -- create a bogus address, etc. But these bozos have already wasted enough of my time.
I think the dead give-aways that this was a scam was that the invite came from someone I didn't know who just happened to have a g-mail address, and -- most obvious -- why on earth would Apple give away 5,000 iPads? They have plenty of testers themselves, and the first 100,000 people who buy it are their testers! (Of course, when a site looks SO GOOD and PROFESSIONAL, but then asks for your e-mail address AND your password -- you may as well give a drug addict your ATM card and password. Heck, they even say they'll IMPORT all your contacts! What possible use could anyone have for this besides spamming!
They'll be gone and at a new cyber location by the time any of us reach them and say "Gotcha!"

Best thing: just warn people who run networks and ISPs. They act pretty quickly.

While I can't prove a direct link, in the week since I emailed a warning about this scam to the guy who had given out his mail password I've won a million pounds in the "msoft lottery" and been contacted about serving as next-of-kin for a wealthy Chinese businessman. I've never gotten scam mails at this email address before.

I suppose those of you who've been involved with this for a while know better than to use your main email address to warn people with compromised email accounts...

Siblings
http://www.beta-testinc.info/
http://beta-testinc.com/services.html
https://www.betatestinginc.com/faq.html <<<<<<< Secured to add veracity
http://www.cregslis-reviews.com/contact.html
http://crexlix-ipad.com/about.html
http://ipadtesters.zxq.net/
http://www.testers-keepers.com/
http://www.bigipadgiveaway.com/
http://www.ukprizedraw.co.uk/?campid=303&affid=5085

Good blog of the scam from sophos

http://tweetmeme.com/story/532736047/th ... ad-contest

40,000 idiots in just 1 week

I'm creating an email account specially for them. With an addressbook full of scammers and bogus addresses.

Can these guys be baited at all?
If you want, I've got an address you can have for your address book that's controlled by one of the more zanier figments of my twisted imagination, lol

Marketing exists in many forms and it's not just scammers out to get your e-mail address. It's possible to sell bulk e-mail adresses, but they become more valuable if there is some association that can be put with them. For instance I know that in the USA it's possible to sign up to websites that offer 'money off' vouchers for certain products. That way they get your e-mail address and know something specific about you. That makes your e-mail address more valuable as a product. As I have mentioned previously, if you have entered your name in a bogus free holiday prize draw again, your e-mail address can be marketed with a known association of your interest in a cheap or discounted holiday.

Thta is of interest to holiday companies or even people who run a holiday scam offer, so the company collecting the e-mail addresses may just be unscrupulous rather than criminal, but I would consider that requesting a password is crossing the line of legality without making it perfectly clear what you're going to do with it, but I'm no legal expert and it's bound not to be a straightforward issue.

I have a specific mail address I use when I must disclose a mail address and keep my personal mail boxes spam free by excluding mail other than that from specific authorised users.

Is there anything to do to protect all the information they retrieved from my email account so that I don't go through identity theft? Please, please advise.

I would not be unduly concerned if you haven't given your social security number or any credit card numbers. Even if you have statements delivered online, banks and credit card companies generally don't list your account numbers in emails. If any of this information is in your email account, you should flag the possible identity theft. The truth is that in most of these setups, no person is going into your account--they typically involve automated harvesters that just pull the information out of your account and spam everyone listed.

If you haven't already, change your email `password. You may want to warn your friends that this is a hoax also.

Even if your identity has not been stolen, you will likely be the target of future scams. They will sell your email, address, and phone number to sleazy marketers, and you can expect an increase in both email and phone scams, including "free vacations" and fake surveys, etc. As Gomer already said, never give your credit card or bank account information out over the phone, and only give to merchants you have thoroughly checked out.

So you don't think I need to worry about identity theft? For example, I have my mortgage account number in my contact file, my professional license number, etc. I'm a little freaked out about it.

I would not be unduly concerned if you haven't given your social security number or any credit card numbers. Even if you have statements delivered online, banks and credit card companies generally don't list your account numbers in emails. If any of this information is in your email account, you should flag the possible identity theft. The truth is that in most of these setups, no person is going into your account--they typically involve automated harvesters that just pull the information out of your account and spam everyone listed.

If you haven't already, change your email `password. You may want to warn your friends that this is a hoax also.

Even if your identity has not been stolen, you will likely be the target of future scams. They will sell your email, address, and phone number to sleazy marketers, and you can expect an increase in both email and phone scams, including "free vacations" and fake surveys, etc. As Gomer already said, never give your credit card or bank account information out over the phone, and only give to merchants you have thoroughly checked out.