I received an email from Brett Lee with an email of antivirusrenewal@gmail.com. It appears to be from Norton indicating that my automatic subscription is disabled and that my subscription was about to expire. However, my automatic subscription had already updated my subscription. I tried (in vain) to discuss this with Product Support but to be honest, she just did not understand what I was trying to say.
If this is in fact a phishing email, I could have sworn that Norton (in particular) would want as much information as possible..Including a screen shot.
Does this sound like spam/phishing or am I over reacting.
I received an email from Brett Lee with an email of antivirusrenewal@gmail.com. It appears to be from Norton indicating that my automatic subscription is disabled and that my subscription was about to expire. However, my automatic subscription had already updated my subscription. I tried (in vain) to discuss this with Product Support but to be honest, she just did not understand what I was trying to say.
If this is in fact a phishing email, I could have sworn that Norton (in particular) would want as much information as possible..Including a screen shot.
Does this sound like spam/phishing or am I over reacting.
I received a similar e-mail today that I strongly suspect is a fraudulent " phishing" scam. Here it is below, in its entirety. The sender's e-mail address is, as far as I'm concerned, a dead giveaway that it's a scam. Even more so, as I already have Norton 360 Version 5.0 Premier Edition on my computer and my subscription isn't up for renewal until August 2012.
(REMOVED TO PROTECT OTHERS FROM MALICIOUS LINKS - Dave)
Actually, I continue to get these even though I have notified Symantec and provided them a copy of the email.
I understand it is not their problem but I would think that they could send out a notification letting everyone know what is happening. Isn't that what they do? Particularly since my Norton 360 didn't catch the e-mail and stop it!!
There really isn't anything Norton (or anybody else) can do to stop you from getting such e-mails. This is why the first and most important layer in our layered defense against malware and fraud is our own safe computing practices. Norton would likely have alerted you that the website you were trying to visit, had you clicked on the links in the email, was a phishing site--although even there, all the bad guys have to do is move the site to a new URL and they'll have a day or two before the site is detected or gains a bad reputation score and is blocked again. But artificial intelligence that can run on our personal computers just isn't sophisticated enough to look at an e-mail from a working gmail address, which doesn't contain any attached malware, and identify it as fraudulent based on its content. That still takes a human being (or maybe a supercomputer).
Your idea about Norton sending out an advisory email is interesting, but would have a few problems of its own. First, there's a good possibility that (because it would be a mass mailing from a commercial address, which your phishing email was not) many email providers would identify it as spam and dump it in their junk mail folders without you ever seeing it. Second, this is just one of an unfortunate multitude of scams and Internet dangers out there--even if you only count the ones trying to exploit Norton's good name. If they actually did send out e-mail warnings, all our inboxes would soon be jammed every day with warnings from Norton about scams that most of us will never see...and these forums would be full of users complaining about all the spam from Norton!
There really isn't anything Norton (or anybody else) can do to stop you from getting such e-mails. This is why the first and most important layer in our layered defense against malware and fraud is our own safe computing practices. Norton would likely have alerted you that the website you were trying to visit, had you clicked on the links in the email, was a phishing site--although even there, all the bad guys have to do is move the site to a new URL and they'll have a day or two before the site is detected or gains a bad reputation score and is blocked again. But artificial intelligence that can run on our personal computers just isn't sophisticated enough to look at an e-mail from a working gmail address, which doesn't contain any attached malware, and identify it as fraudulent based on its content. That still takes a human being (or maybe a supercomputer).
Your idea about Norton sending out an advisory email is interesting, but would have a few problems of its own. First, there's a good possibility that (because it would be a mass mailing from a commercial address, which your phishing email was not) many email providers would identify it as spam and dump it in their junk mail folders without you ever seeing it. Second, this is just one of an unfortunate multitude of scams and Internet dangers out there--even if you only count the ones trying to exploit Norton's good name. If they actually did send out e-mail warnings, all our inboxes would soon be jammed every day with warnings from Norton about scams that most of us will never see...and these forums would be full of users complaining about all the spam from Norton!
There are plenty of these "phishing emails" doing the "grand tour", this time of year; mine turned up New Year's Eve. More dangerous, if you've had a sherbet or two.
The associated "SCAM" email address was:-
Norton Renewals renewal@nortonsubscription.com
Is this a valid Norton address ?
The following previous post link alerts the "SCAM":-
