You may have recently been emailed an invoice supposedly from Norton. If you received an email like the one shown above, you should ignore it. The email may come with the subject line “E-Invoice Report Availability = 19214,” it’s total bogus. Scammers often send out bogus invoices to frighten you into contacting them, giving them a chance to attempt fraud and steal your money.
There are numerous red flags contained in this email that immediately give it away as being a scam.
First is the email address.
It’s comically bad. Why would a business with a long history such as Norton be emailing from a gmail.com address?
Second of all, the email isn’t even addressed specifically to you, but rather generically to, “Sir/Madam.” If this were a legitimate email it should actually be addressed to your real name.
Third, the body of the email is worded poorly, and makes little sense. There is no mention of what this invoice is actually for.
Fourth, the address from the person sending the email claims Norton’s business address is Saddle Dr, Roseburg, Ohio 33548. You can look that location up, there’s no business there.
I went ahead and safely opened the attachment that was sent through my email. In general, you should not open unknown attachments like this because they could contain malicious code. And in this attachment we see various other warning signs that it’s a scam. Let’s address those warning signs.
First, Norton is not going to be sending you an invoice through PayPal.
Second of all, there is no such thing as a Norton Standard LifeLock Antivirus Protection plan for two years. And if you check the Norton website, you’ll all see they offer no plans at the price quoted in the invoice.
Third, the English in this invoice is rather poor. It reads “If you did not approve this charge, you have 12 hours to do so.” What in the world does that even mean???
Well, I do assume it to be a scare tactic that means if you don’t say anything or contact them in the next 12 hours you’ll automatically be charged that amount of money somewhere. This poorly structured invoice makes no mention of where the charge will actually go.
So the bottom line here is if you see an email like this, don’t worry about it. It’s a scam and you are not going to be billed anything. If you do try and contact them the scammers will know that your email address and phone number (assuming you contact them by phone) are both real and in use. Then you’ll set yourself up for more of these unwanted messages.
If you also received one of these emails, or know someone who fell victim to it, leave a comment below.