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Telstra customers warned of ‘unsuccessful payment’

The Telstra logo on the wall of a shop and a screenshot of the scam email.
Telstra customers are being warned about an email telling them their payment was unsuccessful. (Source: Getty/MailGuard)

Telstra customers should be wary of any emails claiming that their payment has been unsuccessful.

MailGuard has intercepted the email saying it could be the latest phishing scam which tries to steal your credit card details.

The email subject line warns the user that “Your AutoPay payment Was unsuccessful !”, and while the sender name shows ‘Telstra.com.au’, the email is actually fraudulent, coming from ‘Telstra.com.au@ovh.us’.

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Although the email itself looks similar to one you could expect to receive from Telstra, once you begin reading the text, there’s an immediate giveaway that this is a scam, MailGuard said.

All of the emails that MailGuard blocked begin with “Dear [-emailuser-]”.

“Telstra, as with most businesses, always personalise emails by using the customer’s first name,” MailGuard said.

The email continues to explain that the payment for your last owing bill was unsuccessful, and that in order to fix this, you need to update your credit card details by clicking the button that says, “Open My Telstra >”.

While the majority of the text is legible, you will notice a number of grammatical errors which also alert you to the fact this is a scam email.

A copy of the scam email purporting to be from Telstra.
(Source: MailGuard)

Upon clicking the button, the user is taken to a phishing page. Although the page itself looks similar to Telstra’s website, the URL shows that you’re actually visiting the website of a compromised foreign bio-medical company.

On this page, the user is asked to enter their credit card details, including name, card number, expiry, and CCV, and then directed to click the button to ‘Confirm’.

Once the credit card details have been entered, the user is taken to a One Time Password (OTP) page, which asks for a code that is supposedly sent to the user’s mobile.

“This is a common tactic used by cybercriminals to feign authenticity, although by this point, the credit card details have already been harvested,” MailGuard said.

“Cybercriminals frequently impersonate brands like Telstra, due to their trusted name, large customer base and the crucial nature of the services that they provide.

“If you have received a suspicious email which purports to be from Telstra, we recommend you read their advice about how to report the scam to Telstra.

MailGuard urges users not to click links or open attachments within emails that:

  • Are not addressed to you by name.

  • Appear to be from a legitimate company but use poor English or omits personal details that a legitimate sender would include.

  • Are from businesses that you were not expecting to hear from, and/or

  • Take you to a landing page or website that is not the legitimate URL of the company the email is purporting to be sent from.

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