Phishing Information

Phishing is a type of email fraud where the perpetrator sends out legitimate-looking email that appears to come from well-known or trustworthy website. It's an attempt to gather personal and financial information from the email recipient.

Phishers use a number of different social engineering and email spoofing ploys to try to trick victims. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says that in one case, a man sent messages claiming to be from America Online. The email claimed to report a billing problem with recipients' AOL accounts. The perpetrator's email used AOL logos and contained legitimate links. If recipients clicked on the "AOL Billing Center" link, they were taken to a spoofed AOL Web page that asked for personal information, including credit card numbers, personal identification numbers (PINs), Social Security numbers, banking numbers and passwords. The information was used for identity theft.

Types of messages to look out for:
  • Promotions, giveaways, urgent or special notifications
  • Account suspensions, upgrades, violations, maintenance or suspicious activity
  • Verification of any personal or financial information
  • Emails claiming suspicious activity, use of your account, hacking, or fraud
  • eBay or Paypal scams such as winning an auction, payment of an auction, or request for money transfer
  • Emails offering advice, or protection against phishing or fraud
  • Donation emails asking for verification, or other personal information
  • Any email that requests a user name or password
  • Any financial institution requesting any information

Practice identifying phony website addresses by playing the Anti-Phishing PhilTM game developed by Wombat Security Technologies.

If you are unsure whether an email is real or is a phishing attempt, contact the business by using its website. Do not click or follow the links in the email if you have doubts about its authenticity. Do not reply to an email if you suspect may be a scam.

If you have identified a phishing attempt, report it so that other people can be protected from being defrauded. Notify the company that is being impersonated. Officials of the company may ask you to forward the questionable emails.

For more information on current phishing scams, see: http://www.fightidentitytheft.com/blog/categories/Phishing

A Note About Road Runner Phishing Emails

Be on the lookout for phishing emails that appear to come from Road Runner. These emails may use Road Runner logos and proprietary information to trick you into providing personal information. Most recently these phishing emails have asked customers to verify their account information (to avoid a disconnect of service or to update Road Runner’s records). Please note that these emails are in no way generated from or endorsed by Road Runner, and that Road Runner will never ask you for your personal information.  If you receive one of these emails, please forward the email and the headers (no attachments), to abuse@rr.com so that we can investigate it and prevent future phishing scams.
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Disclaimer: These tools have been provided for your convenience as a courtesy of the owner free of charge to the public for personal use only. All rights have been reserved by the producer of the software. Bright House Networks, Road Runner, and the software owner assumes no responsibility or liability for their use. Also, we do not offer technical support for these tools, but it can be obtained from the software owner. The products are offered by the software owner to be used free of charge and "as is" with no warranty, and no guarantee of success in preventing malicious software (malware) of any type from entering your computer, or in trying to remove it. However, Bright House Networks security departments have been able to use these tools with some success. We wanted to make you aware of their existence to provide you with additional options in the fight against malware.