We help TV presenter after email scam attack

TV presenter calls on BT to help her investigate email scams after becoming the victim of an email scam herself.

In The One Show, broadcast on Wednesday 3rd October on BBC1, TV presenter Angela Rippon investigates email scams after she responded to a “phishing” email. David Slater of BT’s internet security customer team helped Angela, a BT customer, secure her email account afterwards.

Phishing is a type of scam, where an email is designed to look as if it’s from a genuine company, to try and trick you into giving out private information, like passwords or account numbers.

In the segment, David talks through the procedures that BT follows when a customer reports a possible breach of their email.

“I was keen to reinforce the message that email accounts and email contacts can be very lucrative to a scammer and that’s why we should take our passwords and internet security seriously,” says David.

David’s top tips to avoid email scams

• Take a hard look at what’s in front of you and don’t open the email or attachments if the email is prompting you to login to your email account and verify your details.
• Indicators of a scam can include incorrect grammar or sentence construction, a blunt ‘Hello’ with no name, and messages purporting to be from a known contact but with a return email address you don’t recognise – in which case, it’s good idea to give the contact a call.
• An excellent source of information on various scams is the “Little Book of Big Scams” produced by the Metropolitan Police.

Other steps you can take to protect yourself from phishing scams include:

Install spam filters
Switch on the spam filters in your webmail or email program.

Install pop-up blockers
These stop unwanted emails and web browser ‘pop-up’ windows appearing on your computer. You can use a pop-up blocker in your browser such as the one included with the BT Yahoo! toolbar.

Further information can be found on our phishing help page.

For further advice and to find out more about what happened to Angela Rippon, watch The One Show from Wednesday 3rd October on Catch Up on BT Vision.

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