Slimebucket or Spawn of Satan?

Allen August 8th, 2005

We report, you decide….

Our family was gone over this past weekend — college "shopping" for my son who is a senior this year in high school.  I had a rather large inbox to wade through when I got back today.

One of the emails is from ConsumerReports.org.  It even has their logo on it and everything.  Here is the text of the letter (sans graphics and hyperlinks):

Dear Okie,

I’m hoping you have a few minutes to help me with a project we’re
working on at Consumer Reports©.  To begin, simply
click here.

I selected your name as one of our online subscribers who could help us
review laptop computers and televisions for upcoming articles.

Since you’re part of a select group receiving this survey, your answers
are essential to the accuracy of the study.

Your responses are totally confidential. I’ll be combining them with the
experiences of other subscribers like you. You will not be asked to buy
any products as a result of any answers you provide.

To thank you for your valuable time, you may win a year’s extension of
your subscription to Consumer Reports Online. I’ll be selecting 10 lucky
people from those who respond to this survey. You’ll be notified by e-
mail if you’re a winner.

To begin, simply click here.

If you have any problems taking this survey, click here for answers to Frequently Asked Questions.

Thanks again for helping me with this project!

Charles Daviet

Director, Survey Research

Now normally I discard out-of-hand notifications from PayPal, my bank, etc that I desperately need to update my account information before they (a) suspend my account, (b) garnish all my cash and wages for the next 20 years, (c) release the attack aardvarks. 

I almost clicked on this one, but I stopped when I saw the URL down in the status bar.  (BTW, everyone should turn on the ’show URL in status bar’ of your browser.  No tutorials here.  Figure it out and just do it.)

The results?  Well, the top-level domain for the link is cu.cr-mail.org.

Hmmm… Quick trip to ‘whois.net’ reveals:

Domain ID:D87273807-LRORDomain Name:CR-MAIL.ORGCreated On:05-Jun-2002 20:22:48 UTCLast Updated On:05-Dec-2003 17:04:27 UTCExpiration Date:05-Jun-2006 20:22:48 UTCSponsoring Registrar:Register.com Inc. (R71-LROR)Status:OKRegistrant ID:C38284996-RCOMRegistrant Name:DoubleClick Inc.

Now I don’t know.  Perhaps ConsumerReports.org has obtained the services of DoubleClick.com to conduct this survey.  But somehow I don’t think so.  If so, my estimation of ConsumerReports.org has gone down.

 

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