Scam alert: [Fwd: Thank you from One Laptop per Child]

[Seth Woodworth]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 2:57 PM,  <pgf at laptop.org> wrote:
> chris wrote:
>  > Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:
>  > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>  > > Hash: SHA1
>  > >
>  > > pgf at laptop.org wrote:
>  > >> this mail was/is legitimate, and is part of the G1G1 launch
>  > >> starting tomorrow.  the links go through a redirector so that
>  > >> OLPC can see statistics on click-through responses.
>  > >>
>  > >> i understand completely why it made you nervous, however.  we'll
>  > >> consult with our mailing partner to find out what we can do about
>  > >> the URLs in future mailings.
>  >
>  > I'm sorry, if I get an e-mail with visible links to
>  > amazon.com/xo and the hidden version not coming from
>  > the amazon.com domain I will delete first and ask
>  > questions later.
>  >
>  > This trick is *exactly* what phishing and identity
>  > theft spammers do.  I certainly would not forward
>  > such a message to anyone without verification of
>  > its validity.
>  >
>  > If the links were instead to some scrambled URL in
>  > same domain, e.g. laptop.org, that would at least
>  > indicate that the link gibberish is likely valid
>  > since it is in the same domain as the link claims
>  > to be.
>
> i agree completely.  one more level of redirect (from us to our
> partner site then to the real destination would be far better.  i
> confess i noticed it as the mail was being prepared, but my alarm
> bells didn't go off.  (probably because i was on the sending end,
> and not the receiving end.  :-)
>
> we'll do better next time.
>


The system handling our emails did this auto-magically.  If we were to
do this more than once we would likely setup a better system for it.

--Seth