New Norton email scam seeks to steal your money and passwords

An email claiming to be from a trusted computer security company has recently been sent out to people in Southwest Florida by crooks, looking to steal thousands of dollars from you.

Gail Easterly tells WINK News she trusts her instincts. So, when an email arrived in her inbox, she knew something was not right. No way, she reasoned, did she owe Norton Securities nearly $2,000.

“I was a little shocked and I thought, ‘I don’t even have Norton securities in any of my computers,'” Easterly said.

When Easterly looked at the email a second time, seeing that there was “no logo,” she was positive someone was trying to rip her off. Easterly was a customer of Norton 10 years ago, but canceled the service. When she could not find a phone number on Norton’s website, she decided to contact the number on the email.

“They said, ‘we’re going to run this through your bank,’ and I said, ‘you can’t run it through your bank,'” Easterly said. “And they said, ‘yes we can. We have all the information we need to be able to run this through your bank.'”

When the person on the other end of the call tried to get Easterly to give her access to her computer, she hung up the phone. Easterly told us someone scammed her out of $1,000 before. This time, Easterly wants to warn you.

Rich Kolko, safety and security specialist for WINK News, said Easterly did the right thing.

“Scammers are doing everything possible they can to reach out to you, whether it’s by phone, email, text,” said Kolko, who has over 20 years of experience with the FBI. “And once you respond, you’ve validated your number, your email, your phone and that’s going to lead to additional scammers.”

The best action to take when you see something like this is to delete the message, Kolko said. He encourages you to be suspicious of unsolicited emails from companies with whom we do not currently do business.