Subscribers to Netflix are once again the target of an email scam landing in inboxes on the eve of the holidays. An email with the simple subject line ‘Update your payment details’ from 'Netflix Team' tells recipients that Netflix is ‘having some trouble with your billing information. We’ll try again, but in the meantime, you may want to update your payment details.’
Preying on the busy holiday period when many of us may be less careful sharing account information, or checking for detail in emails, when the recipient clicks on the ‘Update Account Now’ button they are directed to a familiar Netflix login screen.
After handing over your login credentials, the cybercriminals don’t stop there. They prompt subscribers for access to sensitive personal and billing information like their full name, date of birth, address and mobile telephone number.
Then the cybercriminals continue to harvest even more payment information by requesting that the user input their credit card details.
Netflix is a popular target for cybercriminals. With more than 158 million paid streaming subscribers worldwide, there’s a high likelihood that many of those that are receiving the email are subscribers and that a portion of those will be too time poor to check the details in the email. Netflix was also targeted with a similar scam just last week, and again in September and November this year.
Over the holidays, many of us turn to Netflix for some well-deserved down time and the prospect of being cut off due to invalid billing details may just be enough of an incentive to entice users to click and inadvertently hand over our account credentials.
MailGuard urges all recipients of this email to delete it immediately without clicking on any links.
If you see an email from Netflix, please exercise caution and make sure it is a legitimate communication before you open it. Please share this alert with your social media network to help ensure they are aware of the threat.
What to do if you receive a suspicious email
As a precaution, avoid clicking links in emails that:
- Are not addressed to you by name, have poor English or omit personal details that a legitimate sender would include
- Are from businesses you’re not expecting to hear from.
- Ask you to download any files
- Take you to a landing page or website that does not have the legitimate URL of the company the email is purporting to be sent from.
Don't get scammed
If your company’s email accounts aren’t protected, emails like the one above are almost certainly being received by your staff. Cybercriminals know people can be tricked; that’s why they send out millions of scam messages and put so much effort into making them look convincing.
People are not machines; we're all capable of making bad judgement calls. Without email filtering protecting your business, it’s just a matter of time before someone in your organisation has a momentary lapse of judgement and clicks on the wrong thing.
One email is all that it takes
Cybercriminals use email scams to infiltrate organisations. All that it takes to break into your business is a cleverly-worded email message. If scammers can trick one person in your company into clicking on a malicious link they can gain access to your data.
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 network.
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