Energy bill rebate scams spread via SMS and email • Graham Cluley

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Energy bill rebate scams spread via SMS and email

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has warned that fraudsters are sending out emails and SMS texts urging homeowners to sign up for a discount on their energy bills.

Amid a cost-of-living crisis, the British government announced that eligible UK households will receive a grant which will reduce energy bills by £400, starting in October 2022.

Predictably, scammers are taking advantage of the situation in order to dupe the unwary.

Reader Nicola shared with me a screenshot of an SMS she received, claiming to link to a site where recipients could sign up for their rebate.

Scam sms

Of course, the message does not really come from the UK government, and the actual intention of the message is to phish personal information via a fake Ofgem website.

The truth is that your utility provider will give you your rebate automatically if you are eligible – you don’t need to sign up.

BBC News reports that it has seen other domains being used in similar scam messages, including:

energy-bill-online.com
myenergybillonline.com
rebate-ogem.com
totalsolutions24-7.co.uk

Emails have also been seen which attempt to pull a similar scam.

Ofgem scam email

Beware.

The NCSC has called on recipients of SMS scam messages to forward them to 7726, and forward phishing emails to [email protected]

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.

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Energy bill rebate scams spread via SMS and email