Email Scammers At It Again

And again the email scammers are at it again. Most likely I got this email (see below) because my email address is publicly available thanks to Yahoo having gotten hacked about 2.5 to 3 years ago. It took a lot of public pressure until Yahoo well over two years after the fact finally admitted to hack #1 and then to hack #2. 
Disclaimer: Both articles I just linked to are to be read carefully because they were, partially at least, written by journalists that are not computer technicians and/or with sensationalist attitude. The facts of the matter are not in question though!

I have many, many customers with email addresses ending in @att.net or @sbcglobal.net". At least theoretically they all could be affected likewise.

If you think something along the lines of "... but he has an email address ending with @att.net, why is he concerned by Yahoo having been hacked ..."? Well. many years ago AT&T didn't want the hassle of running their own email servers so they subcontracted Yahoo to do the technical handling of the email accounts of all AT&T customers; that includes in Wisconsin email addresses ending with @sbcglobal.net and country wide many others.. Thus all AT&T customers could be affected.

I have checked on Have I Been Pwned and yes, my email address is in both big customer files that got stolen from Yahoo. That "pwned" by the way is pronounced as "owned" and that is what it means. In geek speak it expresses that your computer - or here my email address - is 'owned' by somebody else who can do with it as they please.

Luckily my password did not get exposed but after I learned of the hack I changed it anyway, just to stay on the safe side.

Now to the current reason why I write all this. I got this email:

1. Sender Address: btinternet.com translates to BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS PLC
   NOTHING AT ALL to do with AT&T.
2. You see that I had my cursor on the "Click here..."  link and
3. because of the cursor on the link you can see in the left bottom corner of the email window the the link goes to bit.ly, a well know link shortening service.
   Now THAT IS suspicious, for me at least.

And did you see the errors in the text? Failure should begin with a lower case 'f', the period behind AT&T Mail is wrong and clobbers the whole sentence and "Your Mail; version ..." does not make any sense at all. It is almost like I could say "Bad English, bad actor". 

Summary of all the above: DELETE!

Please, DO NOT be curious, DO NOT click on the link just because you want to see what happens; just delete the email and sleep in peace.

Stay safe!