Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Virgin Billing Scam
This just in from a member who says he got hooked but pulled back in time befor being sunk!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Apart from anything else, there are two things wrong with this message: who it's From and who it's To:
FROM: e-bill.reminder.60157147@billing.virgin-media.com
- this is too long an address to be genuine, especially all those digits
TO: [No personal name]
– could it be that more than a few of these were sent out and they don't know the recipient's name? Nor indeed, know whether or not the email addressee is a Virgin Media Customer?
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Permalink Reply by Katie on
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Having chosen to upgrade my services with them yesterday I received 3 emails and they all begin with 'Hello,' with no name. The emails end in @virginmedia.co.uk though and there's no big numbers in the email address either.
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Permalink Reply by Rachella on
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One big clue is that the grammar is atrocious. It's obviously written by a non-native English speaker and, if you look closely, the fonts are all different sizes, as if some parts of the email have been cut and pasted from other documents.
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Permalink Reply by Renato B on
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I have compared some of my recent official emails from Virgin Media with this one. Not one has been presented like this one.
I have noticed there are two bits of this e-mail that definitely makes this a phishing communication.
1. The date has been written in a non UK standard form - "3/23/2013" - this format is usually seen in the USA. A UK date would be written as 23/03/2013.
and
2. The world "authorize" is spelt incorrectly, this is a USA spelling. The British English spelling is "authorise".
Those are usually the give away signs in phishing emails.
Also, a genuine Virgin Media communication would have quoted your account number and area number, your name, and probably your address too.
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... and its easy to check out where a link in a dubious email is going to take you. You just hover your mouse over the link (not clicking) and noticing the full address elsewhere on the browser page (typically, in small letters at the foot of the page; may need an option switched on).
Some of these full internet addresses are so long and weird and obviously suspicious that few would be taken in if they noticed them.
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If you look at the "Terms and Conditions" on the web site of the Times Educational Supplement, you will see that they use "authorise" twice and "authorize" once. The Oxford English Dictionary says "you should stick to one or the other within a piece of writing".
The point I am trying to make is that in the UK "-ise" is most commonly used. Virgin uses "-ise".
Anyway, everyone, please be careful, just be aware that if the word "authoriZe" appears in an email from an organisation it could be a phishing scam. When that word is used - it should be seen as a Red Flag. And "AUTHORIZE " is the main subject of these phishing scam emails. They want to get hold of your bank login details and passwords.
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