I booked my a flight with the Govolo.com today, after I booked it I received this mail

Thank you for your booking, dated 28/04/11 at 14:39, on our web site GOVOLO for a flight Berlin (Germany) / Faro (Portugal).

This document is not the final confirmation of your booking; however, it indicates that your file has been duly recorded for treatment. Your booking will be confirmed only after payment approval.
Important notice
THIS CONFIRMATION IS NOT YOUR E-TICKET : Youll soon be e-mailed your e-ticket reference (This document will be ESSENTIAL).

You must check your e-mail box until the day before your departure. All necessary or last-minute information, regarding required documents or modifications about your trip, will be sent to you at this address.

Instead of been mailed my E ticket I got this mail requesting a scanned photo of the front and back of my Credit Card and Passport,


(Following your booking on our website.

According to the Art.3.4 ( payment terms ) of our sales conditions, we need to ask you to confirm your booking, to send us :
- A copy of your credit card (back and front sides, note that is important to hide the 8 first numbers on the credit card front side , for your convenience)
- Your Identity Card or Passport

This is to prevent our company from internet frauds.

Thanks to send us all these informations on our email address : confirmation@us.travel-agency.travel before April 2011, 28 11 PM (GMT + 1).
For a priority take care of your booking add in your email subject 'Credit card and ID copies + your booking reference'.

Important: Without any news from you by the end of your option above, we will be obliged to cancel your booking, without any fees.

Important: In case the airline chosen on our website would not offer e-tickets, your booking would be increased up 25e per passenger ( art. 5.2 of our terms of sales) plus the amount of the forwarding charges. An email gathering our different options would be sent after the confirmation of your booking.
In advance thanks for your understanding.

Regards
Web Department)

I contacted my CC company and they told me this is a complete scam no Company would request these details and so I had to cancel my card and thankfully it was not already used,

DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH GOVOLO.COM

I run a blog that offers advice, warns of scams etc. would you mind if I copied this and added to www.wales4u.wordpress.com to warn others. I will also add the link of Scaminformer so people can come directly here to read more.

The same happened to me one month ago. I also thought this e-mail was spam. I forwarded it to govolo in order to inform them about a security lapse, but they replied that this e-mail was serious. As I did not keep their deadline (I did not even read the message in time, but if I had done so I would have never sent my creditcard details via e-mail) they cancelled my booking without fees (as they indicated it in the message). Nothing else happened, except that I had to book the ticket at a different company, with higher costs of course.
Apart from that, I was a bit worried and I started to gather some information on this issue. The European Consumer Center answered that a company is allowed to ask you for validation of your creditcard by sending a copy if they mention it in their conditions. Also my creditcard company confirmed this, but they would advise not to do so, which means not to continue business with them.
In fact, this was not really satisfying, so I started a net research on govolo and I found several cases, e.g. some people tried to cancel their bookings after receiving this strange message asking for creditcard details, and this cancellation action was charged. In a different case govolo withdrew the money from the creditcard account but never transfered the ticket ...
My conclusion is, that this business practice indeed is scam. By sending this kind of e-mails to their customers govolo intends to provoke reactions by the customers like cancellation (which they can charge) or transmission of a copy of the creditcard, where the customer forgot to hide the number and security code (then they can pretend that their e-mail provider has been hacked or the transmission was not secure, which is correct ...).