Email Scammer Warning – Protect your email account
6:32 pm Eastern Time
An old scam is making the rounds yet again. This one appears to be a system status update from the webmail administrator asking you to provide certain details about your account so that we can delete all the unused accounts to make room for new ones.
Problem is, the email isn’t coming from the webmail administrator or your good friends at Hover, it is coming from a scammer who is trying to get your email username and password so that they can hijack it and send out spam, or worse, use it as the first step to accessing your credit card or bank accounts.
here is a sample of a recent example that I received:
Some things to note about the email:
1) It didn’t come from Hover! We always send out email under our real names and company information. We don’t hide behind generic addresses or terms like “Web mail administrator”. You will always get email from a real person that works here.
2) We would never ask you for these kinds of details in an email message. We already know who you are, what your passwords are and so on. The scammers don’t, which is why they are asking!
3) We would never do any work on our system and not post details about it to our Help center. Its always a good idea to check in and see what we’ve going, but especially if you ever get an email like this one!
4) Our customers pay us for their service, we would never delete any account that a customer had paid for, even if it was unused.
5) The email doesn’t mention Tucows or Hover anywhere. We would never hide our company affiliation like this!
There are other tip-offs as well – we have legal requirements that govern what we can and can’t say in a message like this, and other items as well. However, the simplest way to find out if a message like this is legitimate is to simply forward it to “help@hover.com” and ask us! You can call us at 1-866-731-6556 as well.
It is always better to be safe than sorry. Don’t fall prey to these scams. Once someone has access to your email address, they are often able to get quick access to your other online accounts like your banking and work accounts – which never turns out well. Do your best to protect your email address!
Posted on October 31st, 2009 at 1:34 am
Many people may find these as being harmless, but if your email password is compromised, then bad-actors can now have the password of any social network reset, thus compromising say, your facebook account. Miscreants will quickly change your password and email address in facebook, effectively locking you out of your own account, and will leverage this to solicit money from your facebook friends ( http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/20/latest-facebook-scam-phishers-hit-up-friends-for-cash/ ).
Thanks for placing this notice up online — there are steps that can be taken against these types of fraud attempts; I’m happy to see the strong stance that Hover takes, and welcomes any/all examples of phishing attempts. These types of proactive steps could potentially save many others from falling prey to the phish.