Watch out for Irish Water and Electric Ireland email scams

4 Jul 2016

New phishing scams targeting Irish Water and Electric Ireland customers have been discovered, with users advised to be particularly careful with unsolicited emails.

The latest reports from Eset in Ireland shows scammers targeting customers of particular services with the promise of refunds.

Seeking out users of Irish Water and Electric Ireland, the emails are seeking not just your financial details, but key login details to crucial utilities, too.

As Eset explains, the Uisce Éireann/Irish Water email comes with logos and wording similar to that of the legitimate website, with a note looking for users to click through.

“Irish Water is performing the annual account maintenance procedure,” reads the mail. “Please log in to your account and complete the requested actions. Once logged in you will be guided to the rest of the process.”

Once users try and log in a window opens in a faked Irish Water website, which Eset claims is hosted in an Israeli domain.

After users give over their login details, a prompt for an update of personal information (payment details) appears.

The Electric Ireland scam is similar to one hthat ran late last year.

The email says “Your Electric Ireland REFUND NOTIFICATION is now available to view, please click here to log into online billing and view your refund status”.

It’s time-sensitive, encouraging users to get stuck in as soon as possible. Much like the Irish Water example, it brings users to a fake website, again seeking details.

The emails are very polished, it seems, with almost identical initial emails and branding adorning the dodgy sites. Eset’s advice is “not to click on any of the links in these fraudulent emails, but instead flag such emails as spam”.

“Also pay close attention if the website’s address contains the https secure connection, to spot fraudulent websites.”

F(ph)ishing image via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com