AT&T

A friend who has AT&T for their ISP got a notice from them with the following:

From: Your AT&T Internet Services Customer Care Team

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Anyone know what this is about?  Seems hokey to me.

I don't have the actual email, so can't verify the URLs point where their intended, but it looks legit. They are requiring SSL connections to their email servers now.

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AT&T has done this several times over the years.  

Every time they do there are inevitably people calling me the next day telling me their e-mail doesn't work and wanting me to fix it.  Some of them even come in with a printout of the notice from months earlier.

Similar thing happened to a friend's mom recently. She's with a smaller local ISP not ATT, but they've been through a couple acquisitions, and thought it would be a good idea to change the names of their email servers. She also had a letter, but it was all Greek to her, and her email was still working… until it wasn't

She's also very hard of hearing which made explaining it all very difficult, but she was just happy to have her email back.

All the links point to valid AT&T sites so I'll tell them to go ahead and do it.

Thanks

I would be worried as it doesn't address the person (use their name), that's a major alarm bell for such things as I'm sure you all know, even more so when they give you links to click, you should NEVER click on links sent to you in such a presentation, I have seen fake attempts that look more real than that does, but there is a very simple bottom line when in such a situation, do NOT follow the links they give you (NEVER click on them), instead go to your account via your normal method (say a bookmark), then look for confirmation such changes have been sent to you, even if you get in touch with them directly (email\phone\live chat) to ensure the info is genuine.

I'm not saying that this contact is a bad one, I have no idea of their approach to such things, but going by the advice etc. we all give out about such things alone, we would never touch such a mail, sorry for the paranoia attack, but for all I know there could be a hijacker bundled into that which would then hijack you and take you to a fake page, as I said I have seen fake messages like this which are far more real than this looks, but given the above knowledge of such company's approaches you probably are fine, but I would still go to the site manually, and not by the links given just for peace of mind.

The automated link resolves to:  wlmailhtml:www.att.com/updatesettings which is valid only for Windows Live Mail apparently as it's an unknown protocol for me.

If I change it to just www.att.com/updatesettings then it works and resolves to:

http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB407912&cv=804#fbid=XhoSXkyyNKs

I think it's valid, not bogus.

They went ahead and did the automated update and it resolved the problem so all is well now.

Thanks

That's good to hear Rich, and a good call for all concerned.

It just goes to show that its "different horses for different courses"

both 8210GUY and me,( being from the UK) have been long accustomed with the view that any email that could possibly concern "security matters, logging on etc.," if it does not address the person by name I.E "Dear Pauline Smith, but instead uses a salutation such as "Dear Customer of…. "  or some such phraseology is definitely not to be trusted!

In our neck of the woods any such email would be deleted instantly without opening or even a second thought!

Just goes to show how aware we all should be of differences in different parts of the world.

Glad it was all resolved satisfactorily

Regards

paws