Is it normal to receive this kind of email?

[ShadowArmy]

I received an email from the cable company, wanting to 'advise' me on an issue that may impact my account (but doesn't say what). And then it gives me a link to a page with "Beta Products" as a heading where I'm supposed to provide all sorts of personal information, including what the problem is that I"m having (even though they didn't TELL me).

Aren't people not supposed to follow through on emails asking for this kind of stuff?

 

[Krynn72]

What kind of info is it looking for? Is it actually from your cable company? Do you recognize the URL, and do they have a link to it on their actual homepage?

 

[Drackard]

Ring them and get them to confirm whether it's legit or not.

 

[ShadowArmy]

Name, Address, City, Zipcode, phone number, etc.

The URL doesn't look suspicious, except for that absurdly long series of characters at the end, which I cannot find a direct link to from their home site. And I get a 'directory listing denied' message when I try to enter a portion of it in the address bar.

 

[Ennui]

Sounds sketchy as **** to me.

 

[V-Man339]

Don't do that.
This a phising scam, most likely one that has a site within the e-mail that it links to.
If you copy and paste the link into your adress bar and it doesn't work, it's most likely a scam.

 

[ríomhaire]

Sounds like a scam to me.

 

[The Monkey]

Yeah, probably a scam. Call the cable company to confirm before proceeding.

 

[ShadowArmy]

so its possible to set up a fake website without having cleverly placed spelling/transpositional errors in the actual website name (before the '.com' part)?

 

[ríomhaire]

You can be very clever about it, eg
http://www.teamfortress.com.br/engineerupdate/day01.html

Edit: I'm 99% sure the website I linked to is safe, in case anyone was worrying.

 

[No Limit]

Give them all your personal information. If they don't ask for your social security number find a way to give it to them anyway (a comments input box perhaps?), just in case.

If you are absolutely sure the domain is actually the domain of your cable companies website you or someone on your local network has a virus.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Aren't people not supposed to follow through on emails asking for this kind of stuff?

Maybe you ain't shouldn't not don't call them about it.

 

[Krynn72]

If you have Comcast, you can go here to see all the scams people are trying to pull by pretending to be them.

http://security.comcast.net/get-smart/security-trends/news-and-alerts.aspx?cid=NET_33_50

 

[VirusType2]

I received an email from the cable company, wanting to 'advise' me on an issue that may impact my account (but doesn't say what). And then it gives me a link to a page with "Beta Products" as a heading where I'm supposed to provide all sorts of personal information, including what the problem is that I"m having (even though they didn't TELL me).

Aren't people not supposed to follow through on emails asking for this kind of stuff?

I'm saying: If your cable provider emails you and doesn't know who you are, didn't that ring any bells? GEez

EDIT: I mean, obviously it did, because you made a thread, but... they don't know who you are, why would they email you? They already have all your personal information if you have a contract with them.

 

[Krynn72]

It wasn't the email that was asking for information, it was website it linked to.