AT&T Masqueraded Phishing E-mails Target Californians

La Crescenta (Los Angeles County, California, USA) resident John Lajeuness, an AT&T subscriber along with more customers lately got one phishing e-mail posing as a message from AT&T the highly-reputed company on telecommunications, reported latimes.com dated March 15, 2012.

Describing the e-mail as appearing very legitimate, Lajeuness stated that it was well crafted to make anyone easily click its web-link.

Still, Lajeuness hesitated doing so because the last date for bill payment given inside the message had the European pattern of writing i.e. day/month/year whereas the actual bill notification AT&T sent him just after a few hours had the American pattern -month/day/year.

Actually, AT&T elaborates that with the expectation that subscribers will hit on the fake web-link for their bills towards making payments, the scammers think this'll entail them potential victims' passwords entered inside the look alike AT&T site. Similarly, they could also get the victims' name as well as phone-number or any other information desired.

Subsequently, with those details, the scammers could potentially acquire admission into the financial data of the end-users incase they utilized an identical password to access an online-banking site.

However, end-users can safeguard themselves in various ways, says Lane Kasselman, Spokesman of AT&T. First, they must ensure there's the letter "S" symbolizing "secure" suffixed to the "HTTP." Second, the URL details inside their Web-browsers' address bar should be making sense. Third, the website open on the computer screen should be displaying the padlock sign. Finally, the e-mail coming to them should have a familiar, trustworthy domain as its origin, Kasselman serializes and bakersfieldnow.com published it on March 16, 2012.

In addition, according to Kasselman, anytime any AT&T subscriber receives anything doubtful, he should best inform the telecom firm about it so the firm can take appropriate actions like in the current instance of the phishing scam, AT&T, within hours, managed in blocking the spoofed site.

Meanwhile, a similar attack also occurred with AT&T back during December 2011 when consumers got phishing electronic mails, which directed them for substantiating the details of their accounts to prevent the AT&T network from over-congestion, and thereby ensure that the accounts remained active.

Related article: AT&T Website Faces Hackers’ Axe

» SPAMfighter News - 3/24/2012