I’ve seen a number of fake charity sites crop up over the last week or so, and the cynic in me knows it’s that time of year again. Christmas is a time of joy and happiness, good will to all men, peace on earth, and thank whoever you believe in you’re not a turkey! It’s not restricted to the Christmas period but, at this time of year, we are more likely to think of those less fortunate and that is exactly the feelings the fraudsters are trying to exploit with fraudulent sites purporting to help needy children who are abandoned, distressed, endangered, exploited, homeless, hungry, sick or suffering.

The websites I’ve seen so far are very professional with a fairly high amount of graphical content (flash and html versions no less) and a good amount of verbiage designed to make the reader feel upset, guilty, sentimental, or otherwise relieved of a tear or two. Much of the layout and content on one of these fraudulent sites was directly copied directly from a legitimate charities websites with simply a name and a logo changed. These websites are as bad as some of the leaflets that drop through your door, but they cost less, well at least in the short term.

Q:Can you tell the difference?

I’ll save the answer until later. So how many real charities use compromised machines to host their websites or botnets to send their email? Not one! Here is a sample of the spammed image from one of the recent campaigns. (Doesn’t it look a bit like the recent stock spams?) I expect the quality of the email content to improve in the future however.

Please be very wary of any donation opportunities appearing via email, just as you would if a stranger was knocking at your door, cap in hand. This FTC site has some good advice on responsible donating.

A:The Red one was the fraud site.