It had to happen, and I’m surprised it took this long.

A reader forwarded me an email he received from a spammer: The e-mail promised a large sum of frequent flier miles.

In a secured environment, I opened the attachment, which offered low! low! prices on male pharmaceuticals that Bob Dole used to endorse. Lovely.

But appealing to your desire for miles could be a new trend in spam. Unlike the normal phishing scam where someone tries to convince you to give up your e-mail or banking login information, spammers could start using a promise of free miles as a hook to get you to give up your frequent flier account data. Beware!

The forwarded e-mail follows, for your reference:

American Airlines

Hello [******] [*] [*******]

American Airlines has awarded your account 50,000 air travel miles.
To claim the miles, you must open the attached pdf and fill out the
questionnaire.

Many Thanks,
American Airlines
Consumer Rewards Director

Attachment: “Bonus Miles Award.pdf”