Billing Update Email?

[msherman]

I received this Email a minute ago. States to update billing information on a card that is, and always has been, valid. Ok - i'll bite. I went to the site specified and was about to fill the information out until I saw that it stated for me to enter the card PIN code ????? Then states it will not be kept permanantly??? Are you serious? Am I reading this wrong....? Please tell me I am, otherwise I may have to go elsewhere.

Dear Michael XXXXXXX,

We kindly ask you to update your billing information for the following
credit card which has been assigned to your web hosting account on
PowWeb. This needs to be done to ensure your billing information is
valid and up-to-date.

Card type: VISA
Card number: XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX (partly hidden for your protection)

Please follow the link below to connect to our secure server to do the
necessary update.

If you are no longer planing to use the card as a payment method for
our services, please login to OPS at https://ops.powweb.com/ and
disable the card.

This email has been automatically generated and sent to customers whose billing information might be invalid or out-of-date. We have received
complaints from our credit card processor due to the growing amount of charge backs by victims of credit card fraud and therefor have to
ensure validity of our customers' billing information.

If you got any questions, the simpliest way to contact us is to reply to this email.

Thank you for your cooperation.

__________________
Powweb, Inc.
Billing Support
http://www.powweb.com
"The perfect hosting solution"

[YvetteKuhns]

Your credit card number and expiration date is stored in your member info, but your pin number is not. The email could have been more friendly and just politely ask you to update your payment information. :rolleyes:

[msherman]

Maybe I misread it and the PIN they are asking for is something other than the actual PIN?? Dunno, but I work in Network Security and I will not put "the whole house" in one place. There should not be a need for it.

[KimmiKat]

msherman,

No one should ask you for your PIN number, there's no need for it. You might want to forward that email to Billing at billing@powweb.com to make sure that was sent by them. You might want to check the whole URL out. If there's a "@" in it, it's a fake. The wording in that email you posted looks suspiciously close to a email I recently got to go to a special page and "update" my credit card info.

I contacted the retailer and it turned out to be someone "phishing" for credit card info to commit fraud.

[roxannej]

Never give any PIN number to anyone- period. Having been the victim of this very same type of activity please trust me on this one.

I received this email too- there is absolutely no reason for a PIN number to be needed by anyone other than yourself and then only to use the nearest ATM machine. The CVV number is more than enough to verify someone actually has the card in there hands.

There is a grammatical error that leads me to believe that this is a 'phishing' email.

Also, look at the url- the 'io' part of the url looks suspicious to me. Logging into OPS does not show this in the address.

I will be interested to see what Powweb has to say about this.

[msherman]

I agree with you totally, which is why I did not enter it.

the io is fishy, but just an A record on the powweb domain which is fishy as well. I did send the Email to billing - so maybe they will look at it.

I hope people are aware - a PIN Number should never be needed.

[KimmiKat]

Usually the "phishers" will spoof the big outfits like eBay, AOL and some retailers. It seems there moving to smaller outfits like webhosting companies...

[PIZman]

I got that same e-mail today...but I'm paid until 2005, so screw it - they don't need to update my info.

[mjp]

Those emails did not originate at PowWeb. We are investigating their source at this time. The link contained in the messages has been disabled.