Scam John Kerry contribution email: Anyone else getting this?

[yosemite]

I just got an email that looks very much like a solititation from the John Kerry campaign, asking for donations. The return address is from the “johnkerrys.com” domain. The link they provide goes to some yahoo-type store (it’s got yahoo in the URL). They have this page set up so that you can fill out your credit card information, etc., to theoretically “donate” money to Kerry.

EarthLink put it in my “Suspect email” folder, so presumably they know that something’s fishy about it. It’s pretty obviously suspect if you know to look for URLs and you notice that the return email that says “johnkerrys.com.” But for those who don’t notice those things, it looks pretty genuine.

I went to johnkerrys.com and it’s just some placeholder site. Nothing much there. Don’t know if the people who sent the email are really afilliated with johnkerrys.com or not, or if they faked the return email address. (Though I suspect that they are associated with the domain.)

Anyone else get this? Is this wide-spread? Should I report it to EarthLink?

[ftg]

Report it to:

Yahoo Stores. They have to close the account down pronto.

The Kerry Campaign, they will contact the ISP of the frauds and get them shut down.

[yosemite]

Thanks. Will do.

[yosemite]

Well, I contacted the host of the “store” (turns out it wasn’t Yahoo, but just used yahoo in the URL) and also Kerry’s campaign.

Because I figured that the site would be taken down, and I figured that some of you might be curious to see what it looked like, I saved a screenshot as a PDF (Mac OS X does this automatically) which you can see here. (You will have to copy the URL and paste it into your address window—you know how pissy Geocities gets sometimes.)

It’s probably much ado about nothing, since it’s very likely that someone else has already ratted these scammers out, but I guess I feel better having done something.

[yosemite]

The phony only “contribution” page is already down. That was fast work!