Office Depot Latest Brand To Be Exploited By Spammers

Office supply retailer Office Depot is the latest company to be brand-jacked by spammers. The company says they’ve received many reports of both customers and non-customers receiving fake order receipts for merchandise they never bought. The order total appears to always be the same amount, $151.06.  While they won’t say exactly how many reports they’ve got, company representatives say the problem is wide spread and have issued a warning:

“Office Depot has been alerted that both customers and non-customers have received an unsolicited email confirmation of an Office Depot order that they never placed,” Office Depot spokesman Brian Levine said in a statement. “This message was not sent by Office Depot. We are asking recipients of the email to delete it. Office Depot only sends email confirmation messages to customers who request one at the time that they place an order and this confirmation comes from an Office Depot email account. ”

No other details about the spam campaign have been released but if it’s like similar campaigns that have brand jacked big names like Amazon and UPS, there is probably some sort of attempted phishing attack or malware delivery involved. Presumably the spammers are trying to get people click on a link that leads to a fake Office Depot page, much like the Amazon attack that sent fake Amazon order confirmations included links that led to a fake Amazon login page. Spammers and scammers are getting more and more brazen about using the names of well known companies to trick people into falling for their schemes.

It’s difficult to keep your brand from ending up in a scammer’s campaign so it’s important to make sure you have a strong response strategy. Take any reports of such activity very seriously. Send an immediate take down order to any domain you find hosting a fake copy of your company website and issue warnings to all your customers and vendors. Being proactive is your best defense.