Scam alert

[WSB]

From Stan Lock, the Southwest District Coordinator (office in The Junction) and Ron Angeles, the Delridge District Coordinator (office by Delridge Library), both from the Dept. of Neighborhoods, who both in turn forwarded this alert from city DON director Stella Chao:

>>> Stella Chao 3/13/2009 8:03 AM >>>

HUD just reported this:

A fake “HUD” website was recently discovered – http:/bailout.hud-gov.us/- It tries to dupe people into giving out personal information (phishing) and because the site appears to be an “official US government website” some people may fall prey to this scam. Please advise people to stay away from this website. This matter is under investigation by the Inspector General’s office.

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[karen]

I love that the site has a consumer alert to beware of fradulent websites!

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[Ken]

The key here I believe, is that .GOV is a domain restricted to federal, state and local domains.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.gov

every other country on the planet uses .gov.XX with their country code as the XX

In the usa the .gov domain is restricted and administered by the GAO.

But anyone can register pretty much any word ending with -gov.us

.gov.us is not registerable but anyone who does not understand the difference between a “.” and a “-” is fair game for just about any kind of con game rolling across the internet.

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[Author]

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