A close shave, Gromit..

[YCCMB]

My spam filter on Gmail is normally fairly reliable.

The only French bill which we pay by prelevement is EDF.

I have just received a new credit card for my UK bank account.

Those, dear readers, are the facts.

Another fact is that my "normal" spam comes in something approximating English, give or take a few grammatical howlers.

So, as you can imagine, and compounded by the fact that it's just gone 6 a.m. here and I didn't get to sleep until about 1 a.m., I very nearly fell for this one, when it turned up in my inbox this morning:

"Vous bénéficiez de la Facture Electronique et de la Mensualisation pour

votre contrat. Malheureusement votre paiement à été refusée par votre

établissement bancaire en raison d'un problème technique sur le système

de prélèvement automatique.

La société EDF vous avise que le service d'énergie sera suspendu Le: 08

Juin 2013. Si le règlement n'est pas assuré en ligne Vous pouvez dés à

présent consulter votre dernier échéancier dans votre espace Client."

Furthermore, I can only spot four or five teeny mistakes....oh, and the sender's e-mail address is a .pl one...

[Pierre ZFP]

I got that one today!

I was just about to post it here when I saw you beat me to it

EDF have a section devoted to Phishing

http://particuliers.edf.com/aide-et-contacts/arnaque-et-phishing-82736.html

and you can send dodgy emails to

message-frauduleux@edf.fr

 

 

[Pierre ZFP]

I sent the email to EDF Fraud-Line and quicly got the following respose

Nous vous remercions de nous avoir signalé cet e-mail frauduleux. Il s'agit a priori d'une tentative de phishing.

Sachez que nous allons immédiatement engager les mesures appropriées.

Pour votre information, nous tenons à vous préciser qu' EDF ne procède jamais de cette façon, et que toutes les opérations de paiement via internet se font exclusivement dans votre espace Client sécurisé et accessible grâce à votre identifiant et mot de passe strictement confidentiels.

or in Google English

Thank you for letting us know about this fraudulent e-mail. This is a priori a phishing attempt.

Know that we will immediately initiate appropriate measures.

For your information, we would like to inform you that EDF never done that way, and that all payment transactions over the Internet are only in your secure customer area and accessible with your username and password strictly confidential.

 

[YCCMB]

Nice work, Pierre! I should, of course, have done the same, and will probably do so later. Meanwhile, I have posted about it on Facebook as well, just to give a few more people a heads-up. It's something a little more plausible than some of the more day-to-day phishing attempts, given the number of people who have EDF accounts and aren't necessarily in France. If you are conned into fearing you'll arrive at your French house to find the electricity cut off, it's easy to imagine the world of pain and expense you may face to get reconnected, and to react without thinking!

[Quillan]

Just as a matter of interest did it have your name in the text?

[Pierre ZFP]

No it didn't.

In fact it was sent to my wife's email which rang the first warning bell as it's my name on the EDF bills.

[Quillan]

Not having the account owners name actually in the text is normally the first warning. I have never had a genuine email from any company etc which did not have my or Mrs Q's name on.

[andyh4]

Good advice Quillan - except that Citibank Credit Card division for one have been known to send out mails to "the cardholder"!!

Of all the stupidity and I emailed back and told them so.