Here's a phishing email that I haven't written about before. To start with I think it's worth mentioning that we don't recommend Norton as an Anti-virus solution anyway. We've found it to be a rather cumbersome application which is arguably a case of the cure being worse than the disease. We find that it clogs up computers and is constantly trying to upsell to Users. We recommend and manage ESET Anti-virus instead which is a lot less intrusive and does an excellent job.
However, the email that I recieved in my inbox this morning is not from Norton. Apart from the fact that I don't use Norton, the sender was the first clue that it was a fake. The sender cleverly started with the name Norton, but take a look at the actual email address it came from:
info_wyXdWQ5hmi0@wxxeewagdner.asoudkhdufhv.org.io
Now, obviously I don't work for Norton, but I'd wager that a legitimate Norton company email address would probably have the word 'norton' somewhere in there, and also, would be made up of real words rather than a collection of random characters.
There are quite a few more red flags if you check out the image above:
- Urgency or threats (50% off for a limited time, Without antivirus protection you computer could be at Risk!)
- Poor grammar or spelling (you computer rather than your computer)
- Incomprehensible or deliberately misleading link addresses (hover to check the link address without actually clicking on it)
So as always, please delete phishing emails and don't click on any of the links or attachments. And if you have done so accidentally, please get in touch with us right away.