British Gas emailing me re: Online Account??

privateryan_2

Hi there!

Is anyone aware of BG asking their customers to acivate their 'online account' by clicking a link??

I've received a couple of emails about it now... and it smells "Phishy" to me? (by the way, I've deleted text from the links in case they are dodgy). The first email I got from them had spelling and grammer mistakes... which just struck me as really odd...

It just suprises me that BG are *emailing* me about doing important stuff to do with my account?? If they are... I think a complaint should wing their way.

From: [EMAIL="quickregister@britishgas.co.uk"]quickregister@britishgas.co.uk[/EMAIL]

Activate your online account today!

jd87

Looks fine to me. The link sends you to a genuine british gas web page. You might want to delete that link though as it has your email address in it.

All energy suppliers have online account management and I don't see the problem with them emailing you about it. What's the big deal?

Joyful

The only thing that confuses me is why would you have an online account and a paper bill?

Cardew

Joyful wrote: »

The only thing that confuses me is why would you have an online account and a paper bill?

I think it is yet another 'glitch' in the famous BG computer system.

As I posted in another thread, I have had on-line accounts for years, and I now get paper bills as well - with both an email, my paper bill and my on-line account asking me to sign up for on-line billing.

Repeat, my on-line bill requesting that I sign up for paperless billing!!!

Your tariff:
Price Protection 2010

Paperless billing


Monthly Direct Debit

Joyful

I must just be lucky that my Online account has worked since day 1 and do not recieve any paper bills. As this is how it should be why would they ask the OP to run his account online and get paper bills too?

privateryan_2

jd87 wrote: »

Looks fine to me. The link sends you to a genuine british gas web page. You might want to delete that link though as it has your email address in it.

All energy suppliers have online account management and I don't see the problem with them emailing you about it. What's the big deal?

Cheers JD. The problem I had with it, is that email is *incredibly* unsecure, and phishing is prevalent... I really don't like the idea of BG sending me a link to activate my 'online account' which I never asked for in the first place, and then pestering me about it subsequently without warning that any of this was going to occur.

There are two sides, a) it might not even be from BG, and instead be a phishing attempt for me to pass over sensitive information about my person, or b) it may well be from BG, is open to interception by nefarious sources who then can access my 'online account' and gain who knows what access?! (i.e. perhaps they can 'change the direct debit' account, gaining access to my *current* account details).

I'm not happy about it that's for sure.

privateryan_2

privateryan wrote: »

The problem I had with it, is that email is *incredibly* unsecure, and phising is prevalent...

And also, the original email asking me to activate my account had a couple of clear grammer/spelling/syntax errors, which for a 'professional' item was really worrying, as that is often a clear sign of phishing, since a lot of these types of 'scams' are orchestrated from lands afar where English is not a first language. Suffice to say I ignored the original (which got caught up in spam filter anyway), and I will continue to ignore such unsolicited emails from them.

jd87

Your decision I suppose, but I wouldn't waste my time complaining to them about it if I were you. If someone did break into it all they would see is things like your meter readings and possibly the last few digits (but certainly not all off) your bank account number.

I deal with most of my utilities online; gas, electric, etc. My virgin media bill gets emailed to me (with full account number, etc visible). Even my bank emails me to tell me I have new statements to view. Can't say I'm too worried. All these systems are designed so you couldn't make any major changes or see any hugely important information without having to enter a password or other secure information at some point.

As Cardew explained, I can understand you being annoyed about getting the emails in the first place given that you didn't even sign up for an online account. But security is not an issue at all here.

privateryan_2

Fair enough, really the purpose of thread was just to ask if this is an activity that BG typically engage in... I do pretty much all my account management online (bank, credit cards, mortgage, insurance), and online utility management is not something I'm concerned about...

What I AM concerned about is being signed up without a conversation about it, pre-warning that I should expect emails from them etc...

I am a technical architect, and used to work for Barclays in e-Payments, so I know a fair bit about what is possible in terms of data access etc... and in fact we went as far as to can a project that would've emailed customers about their payments because we were too concerned about security (even when the account numbers are obfuscated etc...)

Just because it says [EMAIL="something@britishgas.com"]something@britishgas.com[/EMAIL] doesn't mean that someone hasn't spoofed the email header to mislead you.

I probably won't bother complaining; I have in the past about a much more emotive issue, and it got me no where. But I am about to move house, so will just make sure BG don't follow me

scotty76

Hi,

Just wanted to let you know that I have had this series of emails as well. They started out with a tone of "wouldn't you like an online account (go on, go on!)" and have now moved to the same one you have had: "Your online account is ready to view".

I'm not really that bothered but am slightly annoyed they have created an account for me without me asking for it.

FWIW I only have a British Gas Homecare agreement, no utlities with them. So looks like they are doing it for everyone on their database.

HTH!

privateryan_2

Cheers Scotty I guess that's what we get for putting more info on the application forms than is truely neccessary... LOL