ADP Payroll benefit phishing scam

A new wrinkle on an old scam – the ADP payroll benefits scam.

Many individuals have found a notice, allegedly from ADP Corporation in their inbox asking the recipient to review their benefit selections contained on the attached form, sign and return to the “ADP Total Source Benefits Team.” The email continues how the benefit team will confirm your selections and provide you with a final client statement for review. Unfortunately, the email is not from ADP and the .zip file which you are being asked to open contains malware (malicious software).

What happens?

Downloading and opening the .zip file will cause your machine to possibly be infected in the event your anti-virus software does not detect the malware being launched when the .zip file is opened. A photo of the scam has been availed by the good folks at ThreatTrack Security:

Senior Online Safety - ThreatTrack Security Labs representation of ADP phish — via ThreatTrack Security

Why ADP?

ADP is one of the world’s largest payroll and benefit administration firms in the world. According to an August 2012 SEC filing, they service more than 564,000 employers with more than 650,000 payrolls. This makes for a viable target set from the cyber criminal perspective. No doubt many whose employer or company have no relationship with ADP will recognize this as phish, but those who do have a relationship will be susceptible.

What can you do?

If you receive an email such as this from any entity providing benefits to you, be it Social Security Administration, your health insurance, or any other entity – close the email, then contact that entity via the means by which you would normally engage – pick up the telephone and call; walk down the hall to the employee at the company handling benefits, or log-in to the site you know from the papers provided to you – DO NOT – contact the entity via any of the means contained within the “suspicious email.”

[NOTE 2 April 2014: ADP contacted Senior Online Safety via Twitter and asked that we have our readers who have received emails such as this to forward the email to ADP – the email address provided by ADP is: abuse@adp.com] [divider style=”double”][/divider]