Email scam

[swimmer]

Hi, just had an email supposedly from BT asking me to make changes to my email client but it’s not addressed to me by name, it starts with Hello!

All the companies I deal with like gas / water / .gov etc always start with Dear (my name) not Hello, dear valued customer which is always very suspicious. BT have my name so there is no excuses for not using it especially when other professional companies are able to email thousands of customers by name at the same time.

last month my elderly father in law had a similar email  reporting to be from BT but when he clicked on the link it totally locked him out of his account.

[licquorice]

https://community.bt.com/t5/General-email-queries/scam-or-legit/m-p/2467960#M124353

If you are still using insecure ports, you need to change them.

110 > 995 SSL/TLS

143 > 993 SSL/TLS

25 > 465 SSL/TLS

I have conveyed your concerns regards the wording to the Community Manager

[swimmer]

Thank you

[gg30340]

Unfortunately BT do not always know the name of the person that is using the email address. 

The email address does not have to be the name of the person who is using the email account unlike when you have a utility such as gas / water etc when there is a specific person responsible for those accounts. 

It may be that the BT Broadband account holder who created the email account has given it to a family member or a friend to use or they have "gifted" the email account to someone who has then taken out their own BT broadband account and associated the email address to that account.

What they do know is that the email account is being used with an email client/app and it is possibly not using the correct secure ports and if the person does not change it they will lose access to the email account when BT block the use of unsecure ports.

[swimmer]

Thanks for the reply but it’s very poor as I’m sure technology is available for this to be addressed. My BT phone and broadband account information that’s sent to me by email and post is addressed to me properly and my sisters email / broadband supplier also addresses her by her name.

we now live in a world of many scammers so you can understand my concern.

[gg30340]

If you are sure that the technology is available can you explain how an email address can be traced to an individual.

The email address is not tied to a fixed location such as a house, it does not need to be a name, it can be anything the person creating the email address wants it to be, it can be used and accessed from anywhere in the world.

If the technology is there how does it not stop spammers, scammers or spoofed email addresses?

[swimmer]

I’m just confused how my sisters sky email notifications re any changes is addressed to her by name!

[gg30340]

Sky will have sent it to the email address that is being used as the billing email address or the email address that was required when she first signed up with Sky.

BT could do that to the billing email address assuming it is a BT email address that is being used but that would only be possible for the one email account of the eleven possible BT email accounts that could be created in the BT Broadband account.

BT would obviously know those email addresses but not the names of the users.

I agree it is not the best way for BT address the email but I can not see another way of doing it.  I have not seen the email so I do not know if there are any links in the email but if there are I would suggest that BT should not have done that. 

Most if not all scam emails contain links that urge the recipient to use the link in order to do/complete/confirm something and it is by doing that the recipient gets scammed in some way.