Suspicious Email Claiming To Be From Eir

Straight Talker

I received the following email today.I am aware that Eir are closing down dormant email accounts.But i use my Eir email account everyday.Im just wondering if the the email which i have copy and pasted below, is genuine or just spam to be ignored?

Dear Eir User

This is an automatic message from our servers, If you are receiving this message it means that your email address has been queued for deactivation.This was as a result as a continuous error message received from this email address (code:505).

To re-validate your mailbox please click here.

Note:Any account owner that refuses to update his/her account within 48 hours will loose his/her account permanently.

Thank You.

Eir-Support

Fogmatic

Spam.  The last paragraph isn’t very convincing, but the main thing is that Eir have a policy of not putting links in their emails, at least not in the group ones.

And re dormant accounts, in case you think that just using your Eir email address every day is enough to keep your account live (perhaps having read Eir’s info on it), it isn’t.  Not if it’s with an email client e.g. Thunderbird, anyway.  You have to use a browser occasionally to go direct to eir webmail and log in to your account.  (I’m assuming it’s the same for eircom.net addresses and newer ones).  I only know this because a forum Rep gave some clarification (in another topic re spoof emails!) https://www.boards.ie/ttfthread/2057791306/1

I’m still not sure if using a 3rd-party webmail viewer such as mail2web or myemail counts as logging in to the eir email account (I’d forgotten to ask by then!).

KERSPLAT!

"Loose"... I think you're safe enough deleting that

Ten Pin

I’m still not sure if using a 3rd-party webmail viewer such as mail2web or myemail counts as logging in to the eir email account (I’d forgotten to ask by then!)

If you're using either of those viewers, make sure your login is secure*. Mail2web has secure login but it defaults to non secure.

Myemail doesn't seem to have any secure* page to login.

*Secure means "https" in the address bar, "http" on it's own without the "s" is not secure. Also look for the closed padlock in the address bar.

Fogmatic

Is that still important when they don't clock any of our details, Ten Pin?  Secure logins always seemed to get in the way of sending emails via another ISP.  (I’ve used those services for years feeling reasonably safe - time to think again perhaps).

Ten Pin

The concern is the possibility of your username and password getting intercepted between your device / PC and the email server.

I never enter any login details in a non secure site, if you never had any problems, then those sites are possibly OK but if they ever get hacked then who knows what unencrypted details are available.

Fogmatic

Well, that ties in with my spam pattern,Ten Pin (what there is of one).  Since I started using my phone for email about a year ago, I’ve been using a gmail address in addition to the old eircom.net one (that via mail2web and then myemail, as I find the eir webmail interface too fiddly for frequent use, especially from a phone).

In my experience Eir seems to have got pretty good at blocking malware emails, and I can’t remember getting any during that time.  But at one point (along with many other people) I had a rash of web popup and text messages that, though scam-like and a huge nuisance, were maybe not illegal.  (All re vouchers for retailers I’d had contacts with, that had my eircom.net address). And I happened to get a text this last Friday (including a number to ring) from ‘An Post’, re a delivery from Amazon (another old eircom.net contact), the day I received the last package of my first Amazon order for years.  (On Googling the wording and phone number, all I found was some similar Australian phone numbers).

But with Gmail (which I believe is encrypted en route), zero unwanted emails.  I recently found out how to fetch and send e.g. eircom.net email within Gmail, for convenience.  Seems I now have another reason to get round to it!

Ten Pin

There is also a Gmail phone app that can be used for any email address and multiple accounts (yahoo, hotmail etc). You need the IMAP server settings for the account along with the account password to set it up.

Fogmatic

Thanks Ten Pin.  It's the phone app that I've been using (sorry if I wasn't clear). 
In case anyone's interested, Gmail's Mail Fetcher feature also includes settings for POP addresses such as eircom.net.