The Netflix email scam, which is designed neatly to look authentic, informs the customers that their account will be canceled
Netflix users are being warned against a fake email making its rounds to steal the personal and credit card information of users. The Netflix email scam, which is designed neatly to look authentic, informs the customers that their account will be canceled unless they update their account information.
Australian cybersecurity company MailGuard was the first to detect the fake email, which is targeting more than 110 million Netflix customers around the world. The fake email with the subject line of “Your suspension notification,” is hitting the mailboxes of users only to get at their sensitive financial information.
“Hi, we were unable to validate your billing information for the next billing cycle of your subscription therefore we’ll suspend your membership if we do not receive a response from you within 48 hours,” read the email. “Obviously we’d love to have you back, simply click restart your membership to update your details and continue to enjoy all the best TV shows and movies without interruption.”
Once the customer clicks the link, the next page that opens has the backdrop of The Crown, a popular Netflix series. The customers are then asked to fill in their login details for accessing the account. The next page asks for your full name, address, payment details and date of birth, according to DailyMail. Once these details are entered, scammers have enough information to steal your identity, or gain access to your bank account or credit card.
According to Mailguard, the Netflix email scam works like mail-merge, where the body of the mail is generic, but the sender field is designed to show the name of the targeted user, giving a strong and convincing look to the email. The cyber-security firm notes that scammers can design the fake email and bogus websites in a way that it is almost impossible to identify. Therefore, the customer should check emails carefully to separate the real one from the fake ones.
Though the email looks very convincing, on a closer look, it does give away some hints such as odd wording and unwanted request for such sensitive information. Netflix users should be extra cautious while reading and responding to any emails as they could be risking their sensitive information.
This is not the first time (and certainly not the last time), when Netflix users were targeted with an email scam. Just last month, a similar phishing email scam targeted the business and corporate email accounts by sending an email that seemed to arrive from Netflix. This email originated from the onlineorders.desk-mail.com asking the account details of the users.
Such email frauds are bound to grow as Netflix grows bigger, which it is. Netflix now caters to 190 countries with a subscriber base of about 109.3 million including 5.3 million added in the last quarter. For the third-quarter, the company posted revenue of $2.98 billion compared to the consensus estimate of $2.97 billion, while earnings came in at 37 cents per share, beating the consensus estimate of 32 cents per share.
In pre-market trading today, Netflix shares were down slightly. Year to date, the stock is up almost 62%, while in the last three-months, it is up almost 11%.
