It was just yesterday in the Scam of the day, that I warned you about various phishing emails. Today’s Scam of the day is a well written, but totally bogus example of such a phishing email that attempts to lure you into clicking on links in order to continue using your AOL account. If you do click on these links two things can occur and both are bad. Either you will end up providing personal information to an identity thief or you will merely by clicking on the links download dangerous malware such as ransomware on to your phone, computer or other device. Here is an example of the email presently being circulated. The links have been removed.
| Enjoy New AOL 2019 ! – Oath for more security to your mailbox. – Act Now |
- What You Can Look Forward To
- Protection against viruses, spam and other online threats
- Technical support to help you when you need
- Up to 11 email addresses for you and your family
- Strong webmail Protection
Oath
Oath (UK) Limited, Shropshire House, 11-201 Capper Street, London WC1E 6JA, UK
TIPS
When AOL communicates with its customers about their accounts, they do so by AOL Certified Mail, which will appear as a blue envelope in your inbox and will have an official AOL Mail seal on the border of the email. This particular email had neither. Whenever you get an email, you cannot be sure who is really sending it. In the case of this email, the email address of the sender had no relation to AOL and most likely was the email address of someone whose email account was hacked and made a part of a botnet of computers used by cybercriminals to send such communications. Never click on a link unless you are absolutely sure that it is legitimate. If you think the email might be legitimate, the best thing to do is to contact the real company that the email purports to be from at an address or phone number that you know is accurate in order to find out if the communication was legitimate or not.
If you have been targeted by scammers or identity thieves, I invite you to send me your story and a copy of any communications sent by the scammers or identity thieves. Your anonymity will always be protected by Scamicide.
For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.” Scamicide was recently cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and click on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”