New scam pretending to be Telstra just surfaced again.

They don't dont have your passwords - by getting you to hit the link etc the Telstra password and card details is then available to them. If they had your password they could already access your account and get many of your details.

Yes they are a pain.

William

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55, Usually nothing has been hacked.

It's just a numbers game, I get these emails ALL the time, from just abut every bank, utility, govco office etc, and then some I've never heard of.
They just hope to hit on firstly those that have business with that particular company / agency, the secondly, that people aren't savvy enough to recognise a scam, phishing to be precise, the electronic form of fishing for cc info, passwords, and worse trojans.

No legit biz needs to access this info in that way, most don't even have access to your info, it's buried (hopefully deep) in their encrypted systems.

If you go through a link in a scam email to a website, and click on their links, you can inadvertently upload a trojan that allows the scammer to access keystrokes, such as banking, access number, password, etc.
They can then fleece the account.
Also opening attachments unknown on an email can do the same thing.

They are usually easily spotted.

The email address sent from has a weird domain and / or extension, eg. one I got this morning from ANZ (who I don't bank with), was . . . block at movingtoaustralia dot anz dot com . . . address 'munged' to no enable it.
They register that dodgy domain with anz in it to look legitimate.

In the email, if you hover over links, even links spelled correctly, they will be totally different web address, one designed to look like ANZ page almost perfectly, but of course they have set this up.

For example, the ANZ email had a line . . .
You will need to Log on and unlock your service.
Log on was a linked text, but hovering over it was a very long sham website address to a UK builders website address, likely hijacked for the purpose.

They are very smart, but also very dumb these scammers, but get enough hits from susceptible people to steal or scam millions.

Your email address isn't hacked.
If you have dealet with almost anything on Google or have dealet withan American company in any way, they WILL HAVE onsold your address to others. Wanna buy a list of email addresses today?

Last year I went on a cruise wih the Princess line. BAAAAD idea. They have your email address to communicate with you and bombard you with offers after the event, but afterwards I have received hundreds of scam and spam via email.
Many of them claim I send them pictures or I blocked them on wattsapp, what ever that is,or an emotional plea, or I have won money or Walmart have a $2000 voucher. I don't deal with Walmart, ever.
All similar attempts to get you to get entangled.

Someone In the Princess line makes money out of forwarding email addresses it seems. What is better than having a captive database of suckers?

Thanks for the replies guys yes I understand about links etc and I am very careful clicking on anything but sites known to me. They did attempt to get into my account but Telstra blocked it with a new code required to verify the account change sent to me. They are keen and someone did hack my Amazon account two days ago changing my email and login details. Amazon deactivated the account when I contacted them and reset all access to it. I am not that savvy with some of this stuff and feel quite vulnerable at times but hopefully can keep them out of my bank accounts.

Having your email address onsold and then receiving spam emails is bad enough but there is also another problem..... having to give your email address to someone simply to access their website or to someone that you deal with only once.

A solution that works for me is to create a new mailbox within your email account but with a quite different name that has no obvious link to you. Use this sending address for those casual communications, then when it has been "corrupted" simly close that mailbox and open a new one on another name.

Of course you retain your original address for your friends and hope that none of them onsell it. Lol

It still does not solve the problem if the address you provide to your permanent ongoing contacts such as bank get onsold but it does cut down a lot of scam and spam emails.

And of course it does not fully help Toni from Kalcowera where she has to maintain a commercial email address.