Phishing Strikes Again

Well, it happened again. I received a phishing email that was using a different angle. This time, the email I received claimed to be from email provider. According to the email, I was at risk of having my email account closed if I did not forward by surname, log in ID and password right away to the company.

As with most phishing emails, this email suffered from some poor grammar and other mistakes that made the email sound as if it was written by someone that is not a native English speaker. That was one sign that the email was a fraud. But, the fact that the email was asking me to forward my log-in information was a definite sign that this email was bogus. I always use the web-based email system. So, I went back to the log-in page and found the contact information from my provider. They had a live chat option, so I logged in to that and let the rep know that I thought I had just been sent a phishing email and where would he like me to send it. He told me to go ahead and forward it to me. I also sent the information to the government address I have written about in the past. If you lost that information, you can report suspected phishing emails here.

Anyway, my email provider rep was grateful to me for reporting the information. I reported it immediately after receiving it. So, hopefully, I saved a bunch of people some grief. The rep I chatted with online told me that he had worked in the credit card industry for years and saw hundreds of people scammed by phishing emails. He said, “You would be surprised how many people think they really do have a rich Uncle in Nigeria who is trying to give them money.”

That made me giggle a bit inside because I remember when those emails were running rampant. At the same time, it isn’t funny because many of these emails work off of fear. My email, for example, tried to scare me into thinking that I needed to act right away in order to prevent having my account closed. Who knows how many people actually responded to that email?

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Tagged as: phishing, Security & Technology