Hi
Yesterday I found in my inbox an email from SafeNet advising me of a renewal request with an invoice PDF attachment. I didn’t touch the attachment.
I googled this name and came up with some overseas company called Thales that represents this SafeNet.
Afterwards I deleted the invoice and emptied the trash.
Has anyone know this SafeNet?
Regards
Graham
It is a legitimate organisation. What we don’t know is if the email was from them. Much scamspam hides inside stolen names.
It is the best thing to do. If you have no relationship with them, even though they may be a legitimate organisation, then the email will be a scam. Email addresses can easily be spoofed and this is used by criminals to allow them to scam others. The criminals hope the recipient has a relationship with SafeNet and then actions the criminals request in the email (such as sending money to them or opens the attachment causing malware to be installed). Even PDFs which many think are safe can contain malicious code.
If you do have a relationship with them, don’t click on any links or open attachments (as they can contain malware, viruses etc) and log into your account to take any action.
Unfortunately there are many scams that one needs to be careful reacting to emails/messages even if they are from organisations or businesses one deals with.
We have also noticed recently it is more common for PDFs to be sent by spammers/scammers as a way to try and bypass message/spam filters.
Thanks for the post @Rappy
It sounds like the fake invoice scam that companies get for company services.
Whilst SafeNet is a legitimate security business, it is at the corporate level, not the individual level. AFAIK.
It would have been interesting to see what was in the PDF, but better safe than sorry and just delete rather than open it.
It’s a product/service that big corporates use to manage staff and others are authenticated (granted permission and access rights) to corporate IT services.
Not a product intended for the average consumer. Although if you are an employee of a large company, your employer may use the same or a similar product/service to manage your access.
I have recently had similar ones, one from a company, another from an individual, each invoicing me for McAfee which I have never used. (I didn’t open the pdf link, just enlarged the screen to read the thumbnail.) Straight to the bin!
Thank you for your interest!
Thanks for your input
… which is kind of funny because for me personally looking at a suspect email, the presence of an attachment adds to the degree of suspicion.
While this may have been just a fake invoice scam, there are also deliberately malformed attachments that are designed to take advantage of unpatched vulnerabilities in the mail client when it processes the attachment.
In addition, I have seen the situation where the body of the email talks about a PDF attachment but the attachment is not actually a PDF and your computer will not process it as a PDF document if you are unwise enough to open the attachment.
Thanks
Thankyou
