'National Consumer Center' Pop-Ups

The 'National Consumer Center' pop-ups are phishing tactics that provide fake prize offers in exchange for collecting your information. These attacks may promote in-demand products such as 'smart' phones from well-known brands as bribes for encouraging user interactions. Remove the 'National Consumer Center' pop-ups that continue triggering within your browser with the same security software you'd use against adware and similar threats, and avoid giving any information to companies or other organizations associated with them.

The Pop-Ups Consuming Identities, One Computer User at a Time

The 'National Consumer Center' pop-ups are a series of phishing hoaxes that may also be associated with known phishing domains, such as Onlineretailpromotion.com. The actual pop-ups may trigger themselves through the settings changes of browser hijackers and other, low-level threats that specialize in modifying your Web browser. While you can see such campaigns throughout various browsers and OSes, malware analysts verified activity related to the 'National Consumer Center' pop-ups with adware for OS X most recently.

Like other adware, these threats may generate the 'National Consumer Center' pop-ups automatically, either via a timer or a conditional trigger based on your Web-browsing behavior. The pop-ups promote fake rewards offers that supposedly will grant the Web surfer a chance to win a free prize, such as a well-known electronics product. However, malware experts confirmed multiple reports of computer users filling out the prerequisite forms, only to not be granted any reward.

Examples of information vulnerable to being collected through the 'National Consumer Center' pop-ups, and similar phishing attacks, include Social Security Numbers, e-mail addresses, street addresses and phone numbers.

"National Consumer Center" is the common name of certain advertisements, pop-ups and a ring of dedicated websites that all fit into the broader categories of adware and data-collecting malware.

Typically, National Consumer Center ad banners and pop-ups will seek to entice viewers with false and often unreasonably expensive rewards and get them interested enough to click. Clicking those ads will refer the user to one of the websites comprising the National Consumer Center family of sites. The domain names users are most likely to hit after clicking one of the misleading ads are hxxp://electronicpromotionscenter.com/, hxxps://www.nationalconsumercenter.com/ and hxxp://surveyandshop.com/.

The mechanism employed by pop-ups and websites related to the so-called National Consumer Center is relatively simple. The ads and websites promise different lucrative rewards, ranging from a very expensive phone to a more modest prepaid $25 Visa gift card. Needless to say, all those awards are fake and the entire thing is a scam. The common thread here is that the hopeful future winner needs to provide tons of personal information that is collected and can then be resold and dealt with in any way.

Each website and domain name that is somehow related to the made-up National Consumer Center uses the same interface. As of 2019, the user first has to answer three relatively innocent yes/no questions regarding their online habits. However, what follows is a series of forms that ask for an unreasonable amount of personally identifiable information, including email address, full name, ZIP code, city and state, street address, phone number and date of birth. It goes without saying that providing all this information to a random website is a terrible idea.

National Consumer Center and its circle of related domains filter out IP addresses that are outside of the USA and then tell their unfortunate visitors that they cannot participate in the fake reward program. However, this only happens after a visitor has already filled in all their information.

Everyone who runs into this sort of promotional scam should understand that it is impossible to win any prize and the promised rewards are just bait, dangled in front of visitors to coax them into handing over all their personal information. Thankfully, this sort of scam is usually easy to dodge - simply close the new page and never fill in any questionnaires or forms and you should be safe.

If you find your browser is generating this sort of ad popup all the time or you keep seeing the same National Consumer Center ads on web pages, make sure to go through the browser's list of extensions and check if you have something in there that may be generating the ads.

Climbing out of the Center of Your Phishing Problems

The 'National Consumer Center' pop-ups aren't remarkably different from other phishing campaigns conducting themselves through your Web browser, but may lull computer users into a false sense of security due to not requiring the phone conversations used by some hoaxes. Although incidental loading of a website may be responsible for single incidents of the 'National Consumer Center' pop-ups, these pop-ups reoccurring are tokens of the presence of installed adware or threats. Once you confirm these symptoms, close your browser, reboot the OS, and use system-scanning technology in combination with a Safe Mode environment to disinfect your PC.

The 'National Consumer Center' pop-ups may occur in more than one type of browser and, may be assumed to be byproducts of software with browser-independent components. To date, malware experts have found no threatening software associated with these messages, just as no evidence of a legitimate National Consumer Center organization that has made itself apparent. Stay alert for other symptoms that are common to browser-hijacking threats, including new advertisements along with changes to your search and homepage settings.

Giving your information to affiliates of the 'National Consumer Center' pop-ups may make you vulnerable to other attacks. E-mail spam delivering threat installers, identity theft, and credit card fraud are some of the most threatening exploits that may emerge as a result of successful phishing attacks. When in doubt, keeping your information to yourself always is the safest recourse.