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Phishing Scam Yet Again Targets O2 Subscribers this Year

Phishing e-mails posing as messages from O2, the major British company for broadband and mobile-phone services, have been detected online while striking gullible subscribers; published softpedia.com dated September 18, 2012.

Displaying the header "YOUR O2 EMAIL ACCOUNT IS UNSECURED," the fake electronic mail that addresses the reader like "Dear O2 Online User," is a persuasive message so the user gets misguided into accessing a spoofed login web-page for O2 e-mail where he's prompted to provide his credentials.

The e-mail also tells that to keep the user's O2 e-mail A/c safe he requires following a given web-link and do as instructed so his account becomes secured with the latest O2 EV SSL certificate. O2 praises the user for his instant attention towards making sure the safety of his O2 e-mail. The current security warning is for assisting in safeguarding him as well as his E-mail A/c, concludes the message. Millersmiles.co.uk published this dated September 17, 2012.

To camouflage and conceal the malevolent site behind the web-link embedded on the e-mail, the phishers apparently created the site cleverly. Thus, it nearly exactly looks like the original O2 website. The spoofed site is made still more realistic via making every link and button other than the Sign-In option taking onto O2's real site.

And because the above kinds of phishing e-mail campaigns are so malicious, it's advisable that subscribers imbibe certain easy security measures such as keeping in mind about fraudsters perpetrating the phishing e-mails who usually do not know English well. Therefore, end-users must look for grammatical mistakes and incorrect spellings. Further, such e-mails try to haste the readers into taking action else they're scared that they may find their accounts unprotected like within the above stated instance. Moreover, e-mails, which address the reader in a generic manner say "Dear User" instead of using the person's real name like "Dear O2 Online User" in the aforementioned instance, are easy to recognize as malicious.

Eventually, this year (2012), O2 subscribers had become targets of a phishing scam in July too when they were already annoyed due to a network outage in the high-profile cell-phone provider.

Related article: Phishing Attacks, Growing in Sophistication

» SPAMfighter News - 9/27/2012

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