Today’s Scam of the day is about a not very convincing phishing email.  This email appears to come from Norton, a company that provides a wide range of digital security services.   As always, the purpose of a phishing email is to lure you into clicking on links contained within the email or providing personal information, in this case by phone if you call to dispute the phony bill . If you click on links in phishing emails, you end up downloading malware and if you provide the requested information, it ends up being used to make you a victim of identity theft. This particular phishing email provides a phone number to call if you wish to dispute the obviously phony invoice.  If you call the number in the phishing email you will be asked for personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft.

Here is a copy of the phishing email.

 

TIPS

Never click on links or download attachments in emails or text messages unless you have absolutely confirmed that they are legitimate and don’t call companies at telephone numbers that appear in the email such as this one.  Instead, if the email appears to come from a legitimate company, you can call them at a telephone number you confirm is legitimate .  Don’t call the number that appears in the email.  In the case of Norton, the real telephone number to call for customer service is 855-815-2726.  One of the indications that this is not legitimate and is a phishing email is the fact that the email address from which it was sent has nothing to do with Norton. The email address appears to be that of some unfortunate person whose email account has been hacked, made a part of a botnet and used to send out spam and phishing emails such as this.  Also, nowhere in the email does your name appear.  The salutation is “Dear User.”  Finally, the scammer is a bit lazy in not even including a Norton logo in the email which would be easy to counterfeit so even if an email carries the logo of a company, you can’t trust it.

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 has been cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.

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