A convincing phishing email scam is making the rounds purporting to be from British Gas, users are warned to check their emails carefully.
Customers of the UK’s largest energy company are being targeted by fraudsters with an email claiming there has been an issue with their bill.
The email then prompts users to check their details by clicking on a link which takes them to a realistic phishing website designed to look like the official British Gas site.
The contents of the email are below:
British Gas wants to inform you that your last payment of £27.98 GBP has been declined.
Something’s gone wrong with your direct debit payments. Your bank has been declined the latest Direct Debit payment.
If you don’t keep up with your payments, you risk becoming disconnected.
Please follow the procedure and check your information by clicking the ‘Check Details’ button.
Fake British Gas phishing email
Once details are entered they are harvested by malicious actors and could be sold to other hackers on the dark web.
British Gas give several tips on their website regarding how to tell if the email is genuine or not, including which official URLs are correct.
We take the issue of phishing very seriously and will take action where we identify any attempts to trick our customers.
If any of our customers are concerned about a suspect phishing email – such as this one – they can forward it to phishing@centrica.com so we can look into it further.
Spokesperson for Centrica, parent company to British Gas
None of the techniques used in this phishing scam are new, though they are still proving to be very effective.
This highlights the need for effective Security Awareness Training to reduce the number of successful phishing attempts each day.
At Phishing Tackle, we work hard to educate and test our customers, helping to bring their Click-Prone® score down and thus raise cyber-security within their business.
There really is no substitute for security-savvy staff, and we urge you to look at our pricing to see how affordable we really are.
