Email from Helco - a scam?

[Midnight Rambler]

The easiest way to avoid scams that appear to come from companies you actually deal with is to never click on any link or enter a URL contained in the message, but go to the website yourself to login. Often scam messages have links shown in the text that are different than what they actually lead to (i.e. you see it as http://www.heco.com, but actually goes to www.spambot.ru), or have addresses that are similar to the real ones (like www.helco-hawaii.com).

[DTisme]

We're on autopay, but I still log on to print out our bill. The same msg. came up when I did this the other day. Glad you posted here, though, because I hadn't read the whole thing. Now I know I have to re-register online to get the email that tells me the bill is ready. There's no need to re-register for autopay.

[missydog1]

Yeah, I have to thank you for posting this, Tom, because guess what I didn't read the email they sent me. Oops. I didn't think it was suspicious, but it came to the right email address and I am signed up for emails about my account.

I use the Checkfree service as it is easy as pie and I get to decide what day I pay them.
For some reason, I have more trouble logging in to HELCO and Time Warner than I do into my banking. Probably because I don't do it frequently, but I can never remember what my username and password are for those sites.

Agree with what Midnight Rambler advises if you are suspicious ever.
One I will never click on is Pay Pal, as I know they have had spoof emails trying to get people to log in when it is really some scammer site.

Same with an email from the bank. I would use my own bookmark that I know is the real site.

[TomK]

Yep - I should add that the email I got from HELCO did include live links to places I've never used so that didn't exactly reduce my suspicions. Wrong email address, an email telling me I'll have to log in to get a new account which included links to places I've never used and nothing in snail mail from HELCO.

I'm so embarrased, how an earth did I think this might be a possible scam?

(yes, I'm being sarcastic!)

Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/

[missydog1]

Suspicious is good, Tom. Coulda been, had some red flags.

It irritates me that these companies have a rule that if you sign up for online delivery, they cease all snail mail notification. One or the other. I'm thinking that's why you didn't get any. This is an example of how it would be useful to combine the two forms of communication.

[TomK]

I still get my HELCO bills via snail mail and also online. So at least in this case that doesn't count. I got both snail mail and email from them just the other day - my monthly bill. And before you ask, yes, the bill was sent to my current and correct email address.

Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/

[missydog1]

How inconsistent of them. They told me I could have one or the other.

[PaulW]

Tom, if you want to see what a scam email looks like, have a peek in your junk folder. I just got this one:

"I was also his personal adviser aid on many deal with all his international associate to protect Mr. Muammar Gaddafi interest
with the opposite parties, I made the deposit of 10 Million dollars on behalf of Mr. Muammar Gaddafi to a Security Company in Spain which is a confidential between myself and Mr. Muammar Gaddafi."

Better too suspicious than not suspicious enough, it's true. We're fortunate that it's mostly dumb people that become criminals.

But what do you mean by "live links to places I've never used"?

[TomK]

Paul - the email contained URLs to places I knew nothing about and were not HELCO links. Of course when you see that in a browser (I use gmail via firefox) you get a direct clickable link to those sites.

I've seen plenty of the Nigerian-type scams you're referring to but I have also seen others, mainly to my work address, that are much more subtle and can end up with you clicking on a link to a place that installs malware on your computer. There are some bright people out there running scams that aren't as well known as the Nigerian folk and although there are far fewer of them they are more likely to catch people out. This came across as one of those hence my question here.

HELCO should have sent out snail mail first. Then at least I would have known this was much less likely to be a scam. Also, the email I received was sent before anything was on their website about the changes (and of course sent to an address they should not be using) so it simply was done very badly by them and bound to raise suspicion among some people.

Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/

[PaulW]

"the email contained URLs to places I knew nothing about and were not HELCO links"

In that case, I totally agree. I would've been very suspicious too.