Email Scam April 2020

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3. Email Scam April 2020

 

Another month, another email scam.

 

Dear [user],
We are deactivating the older mailbox version for bug fix. All users including your email [email-address], are prompted to upgrade to our latest mailbox version for better experience, Click Upgrade below to upgrade to our latest version, and get 25GB free data space with a more organized mailbox to avoid deactivation.

[Upgrade Now Button]

Mail Administrator
[your-domain-dot-com]

 

How to Avoid This Scam

As usual, there are a few big red flags with this email.

• Note the oddly worded text with the unusual capitalization. It's likely English is not this author's native language. Either that, or their school system needs a serious overhaul.
• There's no specific information regarding the sender, your server platform or current software versions.
• Hovering over the link for the [Upgrade Now Button] reveals a URL somthing along the lines of 'cqeflkjsdfhasdjsjdfh.com?mail=[your-email-address].' Gibberish domain URLs are a dead giveaway of a cheaply purchased domain name for the use of a phishing expedition.
• And while I can't speak for every hosting platform, we would never send a email asking users to click a link to upgrade a mailbox or any other service. Server-wide updates such as mailbox upgrades are applied automatically.

Again, if you do click on a link in such an email, verify the web address. For clients with web and email hosting on our servers, your webmail address and control panel URL will always contain 'www.yourdomain.com/[something].' For those hosting on other 3rd-party servers, the format is generally very similar. Seeing any other address is a big red flag something is not right.

As always, if you receive an email you're concerned about, please feel free to forward it to us for review.