Scammers are targeting Rogers customers with text messages offering $50 refunds, according to BleepingComputer. The Canadian telecommunications provider suffered a widespread outage last week, and subsequently announced on Twitter that affected customers would receive a refund in the form of a credit equivalent of a full day of service on their next bill. Scammers took advantage of this by sending SMS messages that purported to come from Rogers.
The phishing messages state, “As you know, last Monday there was a huge outage on our mobile services. To make up for our mistake, we are offering you a credit of $50.00 CAD. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
The messages contain a link to an IP address rather than a domain name, which could make the scam more convincing to people who had been trained to watch out for spoofed domains. Additionally, the fact that Rogers’ Canadian customers were expecting to receive a refund would have made the scam far more persuasive.
While the phishing sites have since been taken down, BleepingComputer believes the scammers were after personal and account information.
Note that the scammers aren’t going after Rogers or their employees. It’s the sort of attack on customers that’s outside the ability of even the best prepared company to prevent. Rogers has been made aware of the scam, and tweeted, “[T]his is indeed a phishing attempt. Please don't click on any links and forward the content of the SMS to 7726 (SPAM), to register it for investigation/blocking from the network.” BleepingComputer advises that people who fell for this attack to be vigilant for follow-on scams.
“If you accidentally visited a link from this smishing scam and entered your Rogers account credentials, you should immediately log in to your account and change your password,” BleepingComputer concludes. “If you provided other information, such as phone numbers, email addresses, and mailing addresses, you should also be on the lookout for other scams.”
Scammers always take advantage of current events to make their attacks more believable. New-school security awareness training can enable your employees to recognize and thwart phishing and other social engineering attacks.
BleepingComputer has the story.
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