Heading into the festive season with crazy online sales every other day, many eager shoppers will be desperate to ensure that their Afterpay accounts are primed and ready to go. That anxiety is exactly what the scammers behind this latest attack are hoping for, with warnings that ‘your account has been blocked’, and a subject line reading ‘Update your payment was unsuccessful’.
The email, featured below, comes from ‘Afterpay – Support’, with the sending and display email addresses registered to spoof Afterpay, they are ‘support-after-pay(at)kind-jemison(dot)182-160-154-33(dot)plesk(dot)page’. The email urges recipients to ‘Securely update your contact details!’, stating that ‘Due to your repayment history, we’ve blocked your account from making any purchases.’
Customers that click through on the ‘Log in to your account’ button are presented with a branded Afterpay login screen that is a good replica of the genuine Afterpay login page. It harvests the customers username and password.
After entering their log in credentials, including their username and password, the victim is sent a 6-digit verification code on their mobile, which the scammers also require to access the users’ account.
Finally, victims are prompted to enter their credit card payment details, including the credit card number, expiry date and CVV, as shown below.
After completing the final step in the phishing process, users are redirected to the legitimate Afterpay website and their credentials are harvested to be sold on the dark web, or for use in future cyber-attacks.
MailGuard advises all recipients of this email to delete it immediately without clicking on any links. Providing your personal details can result in your sensitive information being used for criminal activity and may have a severe negative impact on your business and its financial well-being.
MailGuard urges users not to click links or open attachments within emails that:
- Are not addressed to you by name.
- Appear to be from a legitimate company but use poor English or omits personal details that a legitimate sender would include.
- Are from businesses that you were not expecting to hear from, and/or
- Take you to a landing page or website that is not the legitimate URL of the company the email is purporting to be sent from.
Many businesses turn to MailGuard after an incident or a near miss, often as a result of an email similar to the one shown above. If unwanted emails are a problem for your business, don’t wait until it’s too late.
Reach out to our team for a confidential discussion by emailing expert@mailguard.com.au or calling 1300 30 44 30.
One email is all that it takes
All that it takes to devastate your business is a cleverly worded email message that can steal sensitive user credentials or disrupt your business operations. If scammers can trick one person in your company into clicking on a malicious link or attachment, they can gain access to your data or inflict damage on your business.
For a few dollars per staff member per month, you can protect your business with MailGuard's predictive and advanced email security. Talk to a solution consultant at MailGuard today about securing your company's inboxes.
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