By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.com
August 26, 2009
If you got an email purporting to be from the individual in
technical support who is administering your email account, you'd
likely pay attention. If you did what this particular email asks, your
email account would probably be promptly hacked.
"We are pleased to announce that we are currently carrying out scheduled maintenance and upgrade with our new F-SecureR HTK4S anti-virus/anti-spam 2009 version from our data base," says an email arriving in email inboxes worldwide. "You are therefore advised to submit your username (e.g.user@name.net) /email address, and password to our technical officer within 7working days to enable us upgrade your mailbox."
The email provides an email link where you can send your user name and password. But hold on--take a closer look at this document.
It's from a "contact person" named Mr. Peter Scott. The use of the title "Mr." suggests the communication was written outside the U.S. Americans tend to be a little more informal. How many techies do you know who call themselves "Mr.?"
It's also interesting that the "webmaster" has to ask you to supply your email address. Wouldn't a real technical support person already know that? The real giveaway, however, is the address line. There is no addressee, meaning this email is spam. The same message has most likely been sent to millions of email addresses.
If you respond by sending your email account's user name and password, your account can easily be hacked.
What happens when your email is hacked? It clould provide a treasure trove for a hacker. Stealing the password for someone's Gmail account, for example, gives access to more than just your email. It could give the scammer access to other Google applications you might use for work, or for personal finance.
"Failure to adhere to this maintenance requirements will render your mailBox (sic) inactive from the database system," the email concludes. We are sorry for any inconvenience this have caused."
However, you'll be the sorry one if you fall for this scam.
