Telstra Bewares the Subscriber of New Phishing Email Campaign

Telstra, the famous Australian telecommunications provider, has cautioned customers in official notifications regarding a refined phishing e-mail scam, presently masquerading across the internet, published crn.com.au on January 15, 2013.

Customers stated that the undesirable e-mail that says the recipient as "dear" promised a PDF (portable document file) file of the bill, but instead attached a ZIP file that has an executable.

E-mail also had a phony account number, but carried important Telstra branding and links that seems to look genuine Telstra URLs.

Many users published the scam to be "a cut above "the average phishing attack and a Telstra representative termed the scam as "sneaky"

The time for the scam mail out coincided with a genuine marketing email from Telstra wanting customers to switch to electronic billing.

According to Telstra, it will never propel an e-mail pleading password, account verification, credit cards information or other confidential details by intriguing the receiver to click on a link. You should only provide this kind of information in regard to an unexpected request or one you have started, said in an official notification of Telstar.

Telstra also says that it has formed a Misuse of service page in which customers can report a prank e-mails that seem to have a source of Telstar.

The telecom giant has offered some advice that aids Internauts to identify such scam e-mails. Some of them are if the letter is unnamed (as in it is not addressed to anyone personally and it just says Dear, as is the case above) then it is certainly a fake e-mail. In such case, one is advised not to open it. Also, check the account number in the email if it matches with a previous Telstra bill carrying an account number on the previous Telstra bill. Anyways if it's different it signifies a fake mail and not an original one.

Also it is not the first time that Telstra is being aimed by cyber crooks in a phishing email campaign. In December 2012, emails supposing to be from Telstra, saying that the company had found a billing error or was unable to process a recent payment and the user was therefore required to click a link and update billing details or risk interruption to service was intercepted.

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