About 500 employees clicked on an email from GoDaddy, the largest domain name management company on the Internet, announcing a bonus of $ 650. It was actually a computer security test.
Le Monde avec AFP
An American company acknowledged Thursday 24 December that she could have done better after having tricked her employees by email, giving them a Christmas bonus in the midst of the economic crisis, when it was actually a test of computer security.
“We learned that some employees were upset by our phishing attempt and deemed it cruel, and for that we apologized”, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) a spokesperson from GoDaddy, the world’s largest internet domain name management company.
“Although the test mimicked real attempts [of cyber attacks] that are taking place today, we must improve and empathize with our people, ”the Arizona-based company added.
Social media outcry
About 5 00 employees clicked in mid-December on an email from GoDaddy announcing a Christmas bonus of 650 dollars and asking them to fill out a form with some personal information.
Two days later, a whole different message appeared in their inbox: “You are receiving this email because you failed our recent phishing test” GoDaddy’s security chief wrote to them, local newspaper Copper Courier reports .
The phishing technique, widely used by computer hackers, consists in sending e-mails pretending to be known sources, with the objective of obtaining information allowing the infiltration of targeted computer systems.
The initiative sparked an outcry on social media, as millions of Americans were hit hard by the economic crisis linked to the pandemic.