Geek Squad is a subsidiary of big box store chain Best Buy and it offers excellent tech support for electronic devices including televisions and computers. They are a popular company used by many people including the Scamicide reader who forwarded the email copied below to us. Lately, I have been receiving a lot of Geek Squad related phishing emails sent to me by Scamicide readers. It looks like a legitimate email from Geek Squad, however the grammar is poor where it reads, “Today Subscription Will Be Auto Renewed automatically..”. The truth is that this particular email is a phishing email intended to lure someone into contacting the scammers where they will be lured into providing information that will lead to identity theft.
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. In the case of Geek Squad their customer service number is actually 800-433-5778. Never call the number that appears in the email. An immediate indication 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 Geek Squad. 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. Additionally, nowhere in the email does your name appear. The salutation is “Dear Customer.”
The fact that the email carries the logo of Geek Squad is not an indication that it is legitimate as it is quite simple to counterfeit a legitimate logo to give the email the appearance of legitimacy.
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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