Recently, hackers have begun using fake FedEx emails in order to steal people’s information and infect their computers.
One of the most common scams in the world today is for a hacker to send an email pretending to be a reputable company, website, or organization, then loading them with viruses and phishing schemes designed to steal your information. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the easiest scams to fall for; after all, trusting large companies with our sensitive information has become commonplace in recent times, and people will often not think twice about entering in their passwords, SSNs, and other information if the email genuinely looks to be from a company such as Amazon, Yahoo, and others.
The most recent company to have their good name abused in this manner is FedEx, and the shipping giant is warning their customers to be on the lookout.
What You Need to Know
To start, FedEx will never send unsolicited emails requesting information from their customers. Any email appearing from the company that does so should be left unopened and promptly deleted. If you have any questions or hesitancy about an email’s legitimacy, be sure to reach out to FedEx and ask them about the email in question. A quick conversation with FedEx’s customer service team could save you a lot of headache later on.
To help you spot these fraudulent emails, be on the lookout for emails with subject headings such as “Verify Info,” “Some important information is missing” and “Please fulfill the documents attached to verify your identity.” , as all of these have been reported as being used. The best way, however, to tell if an email is legitimately from FedEx is to look at the address it is coming from. Emails originating from FedEx will always be from an @fedex.com email address, and emails coming from any other domain pretending to be FedEx are guaranteed to be fake. While the names used by these hackers are constantly evolving, some scam emails that have been reported thus far have come from senders such as:
- Information FeDex
- Agent-FeDex
- FeDex-secure
- Customer-FeDex
- Support FeDex
- Secure-FeDex
While names such as these are a good giveaway that an email is fake, it is still important to look at the sender’s full email address. A hacker can put any name they want to on the account, including ones that look official. They will not, however, be able to access an @fedex email address unless they hack the company itself–a much harder task than just sending out a fake email.
How to Protect Yourself Against Fake FedEx Emails (And other Fake Emails as well)
The first step in protecting yourself against fake emails is learning how to spot them. Past that, though, you will need to make sure the computers used in your business are equipped with the right security software. Sometimes you don’t even have to enter any information into a fake email to fall victim to it. Simply opening a fake email or clicking one of the links contained within it can infect your computer with malware, spyware, and host of other viruses, putting your sensitive information at risk and compromising your business’s valuable technology.
To learn how to better protect your business against threats such as these, we encourage you to contact PNJ Technology Partners in Albany today at (518) 459-6712 or by email at info@pnjtechpartners.com.
