SaskTel Warns Customers of Phishing E-Mail

According to SaskTel a security services company, it has recently asked its customers to watch out for a phishing campaign that seems to deliver legitimate e-mails, but actually attempts to steal personal information for various illegal purposes.

According to the company, the fraudulent e-mail received by its customers indicated that as a part of SaskTel's regular maintenance practice, the company was upgrading its e-mail system, and some of the e-mail IDs would be erased to allow the entry of new ones.

Due to this upgradation process, the phony e-mail requested the recipient to answer e-mail by entering his/her password along with other personal details so that his/her e-mail account was not suspended.

Meanwhile, according to Michelle Englot, Spokesperson, SaskTel, since the service vendor has received phishing e-mails, it has developed detection techniques so that the e-mails could be stopped at the outset, as reported by The StarPhoenix on August 1, 2008.

Englot further added that although SaskTel is facing numerous such phishing attacks, its security department has become very skilled in trapping them on time.

Meanwhile, describing the phishing, security investigators stated that the act is a form of deception that steals the end-user's valuable personal information such as passwords, payment card numbers, account details and/or other similar information, without letting him know anything about it.

Also, this seems to be a new technique of phishing by fraudsters where users are asked to transmit their most recent private information to be updated on the firm's database, with warning that failure to reply would lead to the deactivation of their accounts. Continuing on that, analysts pointed out that end-users indeed get cheated when they receive e-mails from Websites they trust.

Moreover, SaskTel officials seemed to be rather anxious when they said that although they filtered their IP address to separate the phishing e-mails, they could not help those customers who would not think again but would quickly respond to fraudulent e-mails.

Further, according to SaskTel, in the current incident, 12 of its consumers replied to the fake e-mail and therefore, the company asked them to immediately contact SaskTel to get a new password.

Related article: SaskTel Notifies Customers about Security Breach

» SPAMfighter News - 8/14/2008