Telstra BigPond Cautions Subscribers about Hoax E-mails

A fake electronic mail posing as a message from BigPond, the biggest ISP of Telstra the telecom giant of Australia, is presently circulating online, while targeting unwitting clients, published couriermail.com.au dated March 23, 2012.

Essentially, alongside a header "Your Telstra Internet e-Billing and payment," recipients of the scam electronic mail also find the logo of Telstra within the message so they may be tricked into thinking the fake e-mail as legitimate.

Apparently, recipients are told that while conducting the routine maintenance work, a mistake had been spotted within the billing information they provided therefore, they should now follow a web-link as well as substantiate the details.

Nonetheless, brushing the mouse on top of the web-link shows the latter linking up with a 'spa' inside UK.

Remarking about this new scam electronic mail, Brian Hay, Detective Superintendent of the Fraud and Corporate Crime Group under Queensland Crime Operations Command stated that one clue, which told an e-mail was fraudulent, was a web-link embedded on the message. Couriermail.com.au published this.

Hay explained that the most vital aspect about the latest e-mail was that irrespective of the e-mail ids, account particulars or logos, it contained one web-link that the recipient was directed for clicking.

However, according to Officials, online miscreants were dispatching several thousand fake e-mails of the kind. And, considering the extremely large customer base for Telstra inside Australia, numerous e-mail receivers were likely to have an account with Telstra as well as use Telstra BigPond services for bandwidth and/or mobile/fixed phone facility.

Hence, even though only a few from the huge customer base of Telstra, who might get the scam e-mail in question, really believed the ruse as well as subsequently provided all that was asked, the fraud would actually prove quite profitable for the e-mail fraudsters.

But, Telstra alternatively BigPond reiterates that it won't ever dispatch unsolicited e-mails to its subscribers asking for sensitive information through e-mail links.

Meanwhile, in a similar e-mail scam during August 2010 that targeted Telstra consumers, the telecom company itself alarmed them about the perils associated with hoax e-mails when the said scam asserted it was from BigPond.

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» SPAMfighter News - 3/31/2012