Customers of Virgin Media Attacked with Emails Entitled “Virgin Profile Update”

Softpedia.com reported on 17th February, 2014 quoting a warning of security experts as "fake emails with subject line "Virgin profile update" are targeting customers of Virgin Media and the links from these notifications point to a phishing site".

Virgin Media is a company specializing in providing fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband Internet Services to businesses and consumers based in US, UK and Australia.

The fake email greeting the recipient of the email with a 'Hello', welcomes him to his new and advanced profile of Virgin Media Quick.pay. It tells him that this is an enhanced profile of Virgin Media Quick pay for net payment and the email instructs the receiver that he requires updating his Quick.pay profile so as to enjoy better services of Virgin Media.

This phishing attack is quite attractive as cybercriminals are trying to convince victims that they are on the website of my.virginmedia.com.

Experts explain that they do this with the help of a domain known as typosquatting and those who click on the links are taken to myvirgimnadia.com and asked to give their personal information.

The malicious website seems to be down at the time of writing.

Virgin Media, while disassociating itself from the ongoing scam, defined phishing as an act of tricking people into giving confidential information to commit fraud. It often sets up a fake Internet site (as in the above case) which pretends to be a legitimate business firm like a bank or a known company (like Virgin Media in the above case). Phishers then send spam or fake mails directing users to the fake site where users are asked to enter their username, password or financial information.

Unfortunately such email campaigns of the above type is leading to a surge in phishing over the Internet according to comment of experts who are analyzing the phishing email campaign.

Moreover, it is not the first time that Virgin Media has been targeted by phishers as during first week of December 2013, emails purporting to be from Virgin Media were intercepted which claimed that the recipient's billing subscription had expired and the email account might be suspended.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/25/2014