According to this email, which purports to be from UK telecommunications company BT, your monthly payment was recently declined.
The email asks you to click a link to provide BT with updated billing information. To make it appear authentic, the email includes the BT logo along with seemingly legitimate footer information and help links.
Despite its appearance, however, the email is not from BT. It is a phishing scam designed to steal your personal and financial information.
If you fall for the ruse and click the link, you will be taken to a fraudulent website that has been built to look like it belongs to BT. As with the scam email, the fake site may include logos and secondary links that mirror those on the real BT website.
Once on the bogus site, you will be instructed to complete a detailed “billing update form” that asks for your name, address, and contact information, your credit card numbers, and other sensitive personal and financial details.
After submitting the form, you may see a message claiming that you have successfully updated your account.
But, now, criminals can collect the information you supplied and use it to commit credit card fraud and identity theft.
BT will not send you a generic email that demands that you click a link and provide sensitive information. The company has information about recognizing phishing attempts on its website.
BT customers are regularly targeted in such phishing scams. If you receive a suspicious email, do not click any links or open any attachments that it contains. It is always safer to log in to your online accounts by entering the address into your browser’s address bar or via a legitimate app.
A screenshot of the scam email:
Transcript of the scam email:
Subject: Please Update Your Personal Information 976553159
New BT Online Notification
Hello [….]
Your monthly payment was recently declined. The decline could be due to insufficient funds, card expired, etc.
Since you haven’t provided us new billing information yet, we thought we’d remind you to please provide us with updated billing information to avoid any billing problems with your account.
Review account information.
Thanks for choosing BT.
Graham Sutherland
CEO, Business and Public Sector
Importance Notice
After considerable thought and with an ache in my heart, I have decided that the time has come to close down the Hoax-Slayer website.These days, the site does not generate enough revenue to cover expenses, and I do not have the financial resources to sustain it going forward.
Moreover, I now work long hours in a full-time and physically taxing job, so maintaining and managing the website and publishing new material has become difficult for me.
And finally, after 18 years of writing about scams and hoaxes, I feel that it is time for me to take my fingers off the keyboard and focus on other projects and pastimes.
When I first started Hoax-Slayer, I never dreamed that I would still be working on the project all these years later or that it would become such an important part of my life. It's been a fantastic and engaging experience and one that I will always treasure.
I hope that my work over the years has helped to make the Internet a little safer and thwarted the activities of at least a few scammers and malicious pranksters.
A Big Thank You
I would also like to thank all of those wonderful people who have supported the project by sharing information from the site, contributing examples of scams and hoaxes, offering suggestions, donating funds, or helping behind the scenes.I would especially like to thank David White for his tireless contribution to the Hoax-Slayer Facebook Page over many years. David's support has been invaluable, and I can not thank him enough.
Closing Date
Hoax-Slayer will still be around for a few weeks while I wind things down. The site will go offline on May 31, 2021. While I will not be publishing any new posts, you can still access existing material on the site until the date of closure.Thank you, one and all!
Brett Christensen,
Hoax-Slayer
