Beware! Origin Energy email scam

I just received a warning from the government website – Stay Smart Online:

https://www.staysmartonline.gov.au/alert-service/malicious-emails-impersonate-origin-energy

It’s free to register and the warnings can save you from malicious attack. Anyway, this particular warning referred to a new email scam that was reported by the Herald Sun newspaper on the 19th of July, 2017. You can read it here:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/origin-energy-scam-emails-new-malware-attack-hits-australians/news-story/9d5bd312efa909a548fb9e9e3ac00e23

Basically, the scammers have copied the Origin Energy bill payment email format to trick customers into clicking on fake links that will expose them to malware or worse. Sadly, this is an eventuality I predicted over a year ago when I wrote a post about this very issue:

‘What’s wrong [with email bills] is that each link is a potential opening for scammers to steal your information, especially that big, orange ‘Pay now’ button. You see, these days, the really good scammers can reproduce the Origin Energy logo, its fonts, the colours, even the text…PERFECTLY. If you were to receive one of these reproductions, you would need to look very, very carefully to pick the fake from the original. And let’s face it, how many of us scrutinise each email we receive, especially when we are expecting to receive it?’

You can read the full post here:

http://wp.me/p25AFu-2mi

The Origin Energy response has been to ‘teach’ customers how to spot a fake email. Not good enough. Here’s what I wrote in that same post from June last year:

‘And what do you think the big corporations are going to do about the theft of all my money? Will they pull their hair out by the roots and cry ‘mea culpa, mea culpa’? Not on your life. They’ll say that the fault was all mine. They’ll say that they warn customers about ‘scammers’ so it’s a case of ‘buyer beware’.

Having our accounts hacked is too high a price to pay for the convenience on offer. NEVER pay your Origin Energy bills via their emails. Pretend they’re just paper bills and go into your internet banking to pay them safely. Origin Energy created an opening for scammers and you didn’t have to be a psychic to know this would be the result. 😦

Meeks