How the scam works:

There is an e-mail making its rounds these days through millions of inboxes. It claims to be from Verizon and informs you that your monthly payment is scheduled to be taken from your account on a date coming up very soon.

The trouble comes when the e-mail reaches real Verizon's clients, who panic as they see that the amount on the invoice is higher than usual.

The content of the e-mail looks very realistic and even has actual ads from Verizon's website, added graphically on the side. The recipients are invited to log in to pay the amount or sign up for "automatic monthly payments". By clicking on the links they are taken to the next page, also perfectly replicated from Verizon's real one, and asked for credit card information and a password.

How to avoid:

The scam e-mail always refers to you with "Dear Customer", not your name, like Verizon or your other phone line provider does. You should delete the e-mail as soon as you see the message is not personalized. Besides phone companies, the scammers also use other organizations that charge customers on a regular basis (water, energy, etc) to scam the e-mail recipients.

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