Scam ads displayed on Microsoft games and services to target French users’ personal information

• Microsoft games and services are displaying ads that redirect users to scam surveys, scam polls, and spin-the-wheel scams.
• These scam surveys claim to reward winners with a new Samsung Galaxy S10, iPhone XS or iPad Pro, and request users to fill out these surveys.

What is the issue - Microsoft games and services are displaying ads that redirect users to scam surveys, scam polls, and spin-the-wheel scams.

Worth noting - This ad scam campaign started on April 23, 2019, and targets users in France.

The big picture

French users reported that ad scams were displayed in Microsoft services such as Hotmail and Outlook which caused their browsers to suddenly redirect to scam surveys, polls, and spin-the-wheel scams at a site called getheprzietoday.club.

“Hello, when I consult my emails on hotmail, recently, after a few clicks, I come across a getheprzietoday pub page. Screenshot attached. Of course, I do not click on anything else and close the page. How to kick this thing ????,” a user named Cyrille reported.

Some users also complained that ad scam appears randomly in their browser when they’re playing Microsoft games such as Solitaire or Jigsaw.

Contents of the survey scam

Users also noted that these surveys claim to reward winners with a new Samsung Galaxy S10, iPhone XS or iPad Pro, and request users to fill out these surveys.

“Microsoft Customer Reward Program
Congratulations!

April 23, 2019

We would like to thank you for using our services for so long!
135/5000 Every day we select a small group of Microsoft users and give them the opportunity to receive valuable gifts from our partners and sponsors. In this way, we thank you for choosing Microsoft.

You can win a new Samsung Galaxy S10, iPhone XS or iPad Pro. All you have to do to get a gift is to answer the following 6 questions. This survey allows us to better understand the clientele and improve our services. It will not take more than 30 seconds of your time. Remember: 100 randomly selected users have received this invitation and the number of gifts is limited,” the survey scam read, a Microsoft user reported.

Why it matters?

French security researcher Malekal told BleepingComputer that these scam surveys harvest users’ personal information, which can then be sold to cybercriminals or can be used in phishing scams, identity theft, and more.

The security researcher also noted that one of the scams urges users to signup at a fake online store, wherein the scammers will siphon off money from their accounts every month.

Malekal further stated that these ad scams are filtering out VPNs and are focusing only on residential IP addresses of users in France.