Irish Netflix Users Warned of Phishing Scam

The estimated 175,000 Netflix users in Ireland are being warned today about the threat of a major phishing scam which has been identified by IT Security company Smarttech.ie. The phishing scam comes in the form of a “fake message” on the users screen requesting the customer to click on a link and update their credit card details or else their Netflix account will be cancelled.

According to Ronan Murphy CEO of Smarttech.ie “Phishing scams are one of the most common forms of security threats that users experience. While the message may appear genuine and has the company logo (in this case Netflix) attached to the message, it is fake and Netflix did not send it. If you have received this fake email, the best course of action is to just ignore the email and do not click on it. If you have clicked on the message, do not enter any of your personal information or credit card or bank account details. If you still have concerns about your account, look up the contact number for Netflix (do not use the number in the message if there is one, as this will be a fake number) and talk to someone in Netflix about updating your password.”

“Phishing scams like the Netflix one, pray on peoples tendency to trust the authenticity of message and the company logo. Once the criminals carrying out the scam have collected enough information from the unsuspecting victims, they can use it for credit card fraud or identity theft. As a general rule, one should always be wary of any unsolicited emails or messages looking for your personal information or credit card details, no matter how genuine they look, and you should never and never click on anything that requires credit card details or that requires update followed by a link or attachment.” said Ronan Murphy CEO of Smarttech.ie