This spam wave appears to be caused by the recent outage

Jul 17, 2012 07:41 GMT  ·  By

Customers of British telecoms company O2 are advised to be on the lookout for poorly written emails that urge them to perform a security update.

“As part of ongoing upgrade, have introduced a new internet security into our online services to protect all our users information. We endeavour all our user's to protect their account by clicking on the link below,” reads the message.

According to ITPro, internauts who fall for the plot and click on the link are taken to a so-called “O2 Security Update” website where they’re requested to provide all sorts of sensitive information.

O2 is aware of the fake emails and urges customers to avoid providing passwords on other sites. The company has also published an advisory to raise awareness regarding such schemes.

In the meantime, experts believe that this new wave of phony notifications is a result of the recent outage that affected the firm’s systems.

“We've become used to spammers and phishers piggy-backing all kinds of newsworthy stories - natural disasters, major sporting events, gossip about the latest celebrity and more. Their aim is to cash-in on such stories by trying to get people to respond to their spam messages,” Kaspersky researcher David Emm told The Inquirer.

This is not the first time this year when O2 phishing emails are spotted. Back in May, experts from Millersmiles informed users of the existence of a similar scam.

At the time, recipients were also urged to perform an account security update, but the messages didn’t provide so many explanations to why the operation was necessary.

To protect themselves against such schemes, internauts must follow one golden rule: never enter your password on untrusted sites, especially if it’s in response to an unsolicited email.

Also, online security updates should always raise suspicion.