First off, I'll say that in the end I decided that $150 was not worth the hassle of having to get a new CC, and so I ticketed through the UA 1K number this morning.
After reading all of the advice here, I think that my biggest worry is actually that someone within UA is doing something shady. If might just be that someone is trying to pad their sales numbers, but it could be worse than that. For that reason, I will probably heed the advice of a couple of posters and let UA know about the email. If I do, I'll update this thread if I get more info.
I still think it is highly unlikely that this is an outside-of-UA scam. It's just too much effort to be able to respond to emails sent to united.com. It can certainly be done, but I'm not worth the effort. What's the going rate for a working, stolen CC number on the black market? $10? $50? That's more than $50 worth of effort.
Originally Posted by
ajGoes
In case OP is still persuaded this email was legitimate, s/he can look
here to see that someone called "Lamplighter" with no contact information holds the registration for unlted.com.
Just to be very, very clear: this person responded to an email sent to a united.com address, not un ted.com. I am absolutely sure. I hand-typed the email address (as I was wary of scams just like this). Again, this makes me think that if it's a scam---and it my very well be one---it's a within-UA scam.