Stena Drilling Attacked by Scammers - A New Era in the Energy Industry

Article: Do you see the difference? www.stenadrilling.net vs. www.stena-drilling.com

Short Answer: Probably not at his time, but you definitely will upon reading our analysis.

Long Answer: Ask yourself what is the most important asset owned by a corporation? (You may be inclined to say "its employees", but the answer is wrong, since the corporation does not own its employees) Well, it's the Brand. The Brand - the most important asset a corporation has. And the most fragile. Take a Brand and you take credibility. Use a Brand and you get not only credibility, but also the essence of that Brand. Continued below...

!!! This information is Oil Offshore Marine's Research Work and it is protected by exclusive copyright; you can of course read it but you cannot copy it and use it without our written authorization. If you wish to take any information and use it for online websites or printed materials, all you need to do is send us an email and we'll authorize you, free of charge, to use it; we will issue a written authorization - lacking a written authorization from Oil Offshore Marine, you are simply breaking the copyright laws and you shall be liable to us for copyright infringement and any damages.

On Beware Job Scams Oil Offshore Marine provides very detailed information on how to detect and avoid employment scams; on that page, you will find lots of explanations on how scammers act, what fake names they use and other useful details.

Also, you can see a list of all the names we discovered to be used by scammers in their illegal activities; there are a lot of names in it, and, unfortunately, we are now adding a new name to the list: Stena Drilling. Here is the list: Companies' Names Used in Job / Employment Scams

You may wonder, at this stage, why have we added www.stenadrilling.net to the black list of fake websites. No, we are not out of our minds. Stena Drilling is a major company (see its history), yet www.stenadrilling.net does not belong to Stena Drilling. How come? It has "stena" and "drilling" in the domain name. But this is simply irrelevant, as we're going to show you.

ONLINE WAR: www.stenadrilling.net vs. www.stena-drilling.com

In 2007, Oil Offshore Marine has noticed several new forms of fraud & illegal activities related to the Oil & Gas companies/industry. You will probably be curious to find out how a fake Shell website looks like, a fraud attack on Aker Kvaerner, and a fake Statoil website. Also, you may want to see a fake ExxonMobil website.

But now we see that the scammers have, unfortunately, evolved, as it seems they had gained additional IT skills (either on their own, or by using third party personnel). And, sadly for Stena Drilling, it is them who are under attack.

If you read the information above (Beware Job Scams + Companies Names Used in Job Scams + Black List of Fake Websites + Fake Shell + Fake Statoil + Fake ExxonMobil) you will probably understand why this scam attack is a first.

As said at the beginning of the article, this is a first ("A New Era in the Energy Industry"). Yet it is a first not because the scammers attack an Energy-related corporation (see examples above); it is a first because a website is copied to an extent where very, very few people can distinguish the fake from the real. And the consequences can be disastrous!

In depth analysis:

1. When you first land on www.stenadrilling.net you have no reason to believe you are on a fake website. What reasons would you have? The website looks nice, it has a clean design, Stena Drilling's logo and name appear in high-resolution formats; there are no signs of fraudulent activity.

In fact, you may be so convinced that www.stenadrilling.net is the real Stena Drilling hompage that you would look no further. But Oil Offshore Marine looks further, because we know Stena Drilling would use a .com domain, not a .net one.

www.stenadrilling.net looks SO real that you are convinced it is Stena's website. And assuming you wanted to do business with Stena or get a job offer from Stena you would have been scamed right away, losing money and financial information. Unfortunately, www.stenadrilling.net is a fake website.

2. A side-by-side comparison of the landing pages (homepages) reveals this: both www.stenadrilling.net and www.stena-drilling.com have a nice layout, Stena's logo and one of Stena's vessels: Stena DrillMAX.

Look here (click on the numbers): 1 and 2. While the big pictures (of the vessels) are different (Stena DrillMAX and Stena DrillMAX Ice), BOTH websites would appear to be genuine. Still, one is fake, the other is real. How to distinguish?

3. We move on and proceed to analyze all other pages from the two websites under present analysis. And we see that: a) the info on the "Drilling Operations" is virtually the same (see proofs 3 and 4); b) the HSE page is the same (5 and 6) and c) the Career related page is exactly the same (7 and 8). How come these pages are identical and yet one website is real, the other being fake? Read on.

4. Throughout our extensive analysis, we have found that www.stenadrilling.net and www.stena-drilling.com are identical. Except for one page. The Contact Us page. Here is how a contact page looks like - 9, and here is the other contact page - 10. And in case you're not seeing anything strange, let's explain:

- first, the UK telephone (and fax) numbers are changed. The real Stena indicates as number "01224 401180", this being a valid telephone number, while the fake Stena has this " Tel +44 (0) 703 185 9374" as telephone number - this being a hoax number.

- second, the US telephone number is changed; the scammers have forgotten to change Stena Norway's telephone numbers.

- third, all the genuine email addresses belonging to Stena have been changed from SDLCommercial@Stena.com to SDLCommercial@stenadrilling.net, SDLOperations@Stena.com to SDLOperations@stenadrilling.net, and so forth.

5. At this stage, you wonder yourself how did the scammers (www.stenadrilling.net) succeed in copying, so accurately, the real Stena Drilling (www.stena-drilling.com). The answer is this: the scammers have used a program called HTTrack Website Copier, program that mirrors an entire website, allowing criminals to steal the name, brand, and online presence of any company. If you look on the fake website's view source information you will see "Mirrored from www.stena-drilling.com by HTTrack Website Copier/3.x [XR&CO'2007], Sat, 03 May 2008 21:46:01 GMT" - Proof

Translated, this means that the fake website mirrors the version of the real website, www.stena-drilling.com dated May 3rd, 2008.

6. If you wanted to get one more proof, WHOIS would provide it within seconds. The domain www.stenadrilling.net has been registered on 2008-04-26, the registrant being "Nancy Dement" (?!?), with jnathen@gmail.com as registrant's email. This is a fake name and a fake email.

The following is a reproduction of what we have previously said on this page One Company - Several Websites?

DANGERS of allowing fake websites to exist and operate

If a company has had its website cloned (with one or more fake websites) by hackers/scammers there are the following dangers:

1) corporate and brand-related problems due to the fact that its name, logo, corporate details, brand and official website are illegally used in fraudulent activities.

2) loss of credibility not only throughout the web, but also outside the web.

3) the company's business partners or other third companies may get emails from fake "employees" or "senior managment staff" [from emails such as operations@stenadrilling.net, sales@stenadrilling.net, or careers@stenadrilling.net - note that Stena Drilling's official website is www.stena-drilling.com], emails containing completely false information regarding current or future projects, design or management data, sales, partnerships, updates, news or ... spam.

4) the scammers can "issue" and send to media companies / newspapers / internet news portals false press releases which can hurt the company not only by the news itself, but also by decreasing share price values.

5) the scammers might send false information regarding stock, share price, and so on.

6) jobseekers may be fooled into believing they are undergoing a recruitment process with THE company itself, and getting a job with it; subsequently they'll be put to pay "work permit fees" or "immigration fees" [see the Job Scams information]. With their money lost and their identity lost, they may bring legal action against the company.

Therefore: The information on Stena Drilling www.stenadrilling.net is completely false, inaccurate, and misleading. These are all FAKES designed to fool the business partners, media, and jobseekers.

Oil Offshore Marine has officially informed Stena Drilling about this case.

To read more information about Job Scams, please click here.

Companies: Click here to go to Oil Offshore Marine Homepage, here if you want to Post a Job, here if you want to go to your account, or here if you want to Contact us.

Jobseekers: Click here to go to Oil Offshore Marine Homepage, here if you want to search jobs, here if you want to see the Top Jobs, or here if you want to go to the Candidate Home page.

You may want to read the Candidate FAQ and the Candidate Help information, too.