Lovers of free pizza, beware.
WPXI News is reporting that scammers are recycling the Pizza Hut 55th anniversary “free pizza” email. According to the email, Pizza Hut is celebrating their 55th anniversary by giving away free pizza to select customers. All they have to do is click on the link, and fill in the information. However, clicking on the link will begin downloading malware to your computer, or ask for more information (phishing), or both.
Malware is a program that you are coerced or misguided into downloading onto your computer. When opened, it most often comes up as a scan program stating your computer is in danger and you need to purchase a specific program to rid your computer of this problem. It’s essentially a way to extort money from you.
Phishing is a trick program, which tries to get personal information from you, such as passwords. A business should never, ever ask you for a password for any reason.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has sent news bulletins to West Virginians letting them know not to open the emails and to just delete them. If the emails are unopened, they cannot download malware or ask for further information.
The official Pizza Hut website shows no free pizza offers. Also, Pizza Hut celebrated its 55th anniversary last year.
The Federal Trade Commission put a bulletin online to assist customer as to how to identify the scam email. They advise that scammers are able to use logos to create misleading emails, so a customer cannot go exclusively by that. There are some things you should look for, however:
- the email might have gone to your junk folder
- the sender’s email address isn’t a Pizza Hut email address
- when you hover over the coupon link, it doesn’t show pizzahut.com
- if you type in the web address for Pizza Hut, you won’t see anything about free pizza on the company’s official site
- if you do a search on Pizza Hut’s 55 th anniversary, you’ll find out from news articles that the company just offered discounted pizza — last year
- ask yourself if you signed up to get email discounts from this company. If not, it’s unlikely they’d send you a real discount out of the blue
You can also look for other giveaways that the email isn’t real by typing in the URL of the company and see if it matches the sender of your email. If they do not match, just trash the email. You can also check the Federal Trade Commission website to see if they have any information on a possible email scam.
If you have any other questions, simply call your local Pizza Hut and ask to speak to a manager to find out.
[Image courtesy of the Federal Trade Commission]
