Spam & Scam Emails

You’ve probably heard about the Nigerian prince that has millions of dollars waiting for you and all you have to do is wire $1000 to get your hands on the riches.  You’ve likely gotten many emails pretending to be from NTD or another company stating your account will be closed if you don’t click a link and provide your email address and password. You might have gotten a pop-up window that takes over your computer telling you that you need to call Microsoft about viruses, only to be connected to an overseas call center not affiliated with Microsoft at all.

Hopefully you didn’t fall for any of these scam attempts.

Recently, however, we have been seeing spam emails that take things to another level with scare tactics. These emails may claim to be from someone who says they have invaded your accounts or computer and will share personal information publicly if you do not send them a certain amount of money or bitcoins. On occasion, these emails may even contain a password you may have used in the past, or one you may currently use. While these newer extortion messages seem much more personalized than previous scam attempts, they become much less terrifying once their trick is exposed.

Data Breaches

When websites like LinkedIn and MySpace get hacked and information gets stolen, that data eventually will end up in the wrong hands. Armed with millions of email addresses and passwords, these “hackers”, who are more likely just people overseas who bought the leaked data and set up spam bots, spam the list of emails with the leaked passwords in the message to try to trick you into thinking they have way more access than they actually do.

To see if you have been part of a data breach you can visit https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and enter your email address to see what breaches you may have been a part of. Please note: NTD is not affiliated with this website and has no control over it or its content. Use at your own risk.

What Can You Do?

If the email you received has your current password for either your email address or any sites where you use that combination of email address and password, change those passwords immediately. If the password they put in the email is one you no longer use for anything, then you don’t really have to do anything.

The emails give a deadline for when they will release your “sensitive information” but nothing will happen after that time passes. Simply delete or move the message to your spam folder. If you need any assistance getting spam filtering set up on your account please call our technical support.

Remember that NTD will never ask for any sensitive information via email, or via browser popup requesting you call an 800 number. If you get something that seems suspicious but you’re not quite sure, it’s always better to be safe than sorry and give us a call.