Note from Stars - Bogus?

[UrmaBlume]

I just received the note pasted below. It looks bogus to me. Anybody else get one?

Dear SPELL.USERID,

As part of our efforts to continually improve PokerStars, we would like to request your feedback by participating in a brief survey.

You can only receive the link by logging in to the Poker and should take no more than ten minutes to complete. Please note that we use a third party tool called Zoomerang to facilitate all of our surveys.

Your input is extremely valuable. As a Thank You for your response, we would like to give you 300 Frequent Player Points (FPPs) that can help you to qualify for a wide range of rewards.

Please respond no later than 4th November and please be certain to include your EXACT userID at the end of the survey to qualify for your reward. FPPs will be credited to your account on 5th November.

Thank you,
PokerStars Player Marketing

[kindling]

I got one recently and filled it out. Got the FPPs as promised. So the Zoomerang surveys are legitimate. I would never input critical information, but they've already got your username and email address.

However, I don't like the phrase "You can only receive the link by logging in to the Poker...".

My email included a direct link to http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=....

for my survey. Be very careful if they're asking you to LOGIN to another site first. That sounds like phishing. If in doubt, email stars.

[nyc999]

Zoomerang is a legit website, many companies use the site to create surveys when they do not want to hire a market research firm.

[berya]

it's legit

[MikeyPatriot]

They've done these before, it's legit.

[Bobo Fett]

Stars, you have a good reputation on these boards for your customer service...why oh why can't you fix this? There's a thread about this probably once a month; it's obvious there must be a problem with the way the email is worded that makes people think it is a scam. Even if you are paying a third party to take care of this, you can't tell me you have no control over the wording of the email if you wanted to. Fix this Stars!

I should also add, as people get used to this somewhat shady looking email being normal, it's only a matter of time until someone makes a phishing attempt using a similar email. Someone will post on here about it, will be told that it's legit, and then you'll have a REAL problem.

[DrewOnTilt]

I got the same mail. It does not include a link, and no popup window appears when I log in to the client. I have no idea how to go about filling out this survey, assuming that it is legit.

To be quite honest, the "Dear SPELL.USERID" part nearly made me delete the mail as a phishing attempt. The message header does appear to be legit, though I am still not 100% convinced.


[ QUOTE ]
From events@pokerstars.com Fri Oct 26 03:24:22 2007
Return-Path: <events@pokerstars.com>
Authentication-Results: mta405.mail.re4.yahoo.com from=pokerstars.com; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 217.20.47.9 (EHLO mail13.pokerstars.com) (217.20.47.9)
by mta405.mail.re4.yahoo.com with SMTP; Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:49:28 -0700
Received: from 10.70.10.53 (sigma5 [10.70.10.5])
by mail13.pokerstars.com (mailer) with SMTP id 52F031AD245
for <drewontilt@yahoo.com>; Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:25:33 -0400 (EDT)
To: drewontilt@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:24:22 -0400
From: events@pokerstars.com
Subject: 300 FPP for your help
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-Id: <20071026102533.52F031AD245@mail13.pokerstars.c om>
Content-Length: 793


[/ QUOTE ]

[boscoboy]

[ QUOTE ]
Stars, you have a good reputation on these boards for your customer service...why oh why can't you fix this? There's a thread about this probably once a month; it's obvious there must be a problem with the way the email is worded that makes people think it is a scam. Even if you are paying a third party to take care of this, you can't tell me you have no control over the wording of the email if you wanted to. Fix this Stars!

I should also add, as people get used to this somewhat shady looking email being normal, it's only a matter of time until someone makes a phishing attempt using a similar email. Someone will post on here about it, will be told that it's legit, and then you'll have a REAL problem.

[/ QUOTE ]

seriously. login..get pop up..fill out survey.

why cant it be this easy??

[amulet]

i received the same e-mail. i immediatly forwarded it to support@pokerstars.com

the response came back that it was an error, but is real.

below is their reply with my name delated.

Hello XXXXXX,

Thank you for your email.

I can confirm, that this email indeed was sent from PokerStars to you, if
you would like to take part of it.
We do apologize for the technical error that occurred, when sending the
emails which resulted in wrong User IDs.

Please let us know if you need any further assistance.


Regards,

Bernadett
PokerStars Support Team

[MicroBob]

Good post Bobo Fett.

Phishing is a very real problem.
Sometimes when a player gets phished and his account gets hacked and he loses money the site will tell him it's his fault because he needs to be more careful and protective of his password.

So WHY does Stars send out these e-mails that look to MANY people like phishing attempts?
Seriously, this is just weird.

They should be sending out this exact same e-mail as an example of what NOT to click and then saying to their customers, "If you ever get an e-mail that looks like this we want to caution you that clicking the link could indeed be very dangerous. If it's not from the official Stars address then you should be highly suspicious and report it to us at once. We will NEVER send you an e-mail from an address other than PokerStars."

Stuff like that.

It's incredibly irresponsible of them to continue sending these e-mails out from non-pokerstars addresses. Especially after this same complaint and topic has been brought up on the forums here time after time after time.

If the player is supposed to be responsible for protecting their password then Stars shouldn't be sending stuff out that looks like phishing attempts. It's pretty simple really.