NHTC Targeted in Email Scam

In the past few months, New Hope Telephone Cooperative members have received a number of emails requesting their personal email login information. Unfortunately, these emails were not from NHTC, but rather an Internet scammer.

Emails claiming to be from NHTC inaccurately inform customers that the cooperative has lost customer login information and request that members reply to the email with that information.

“We don’t send out emails often, and never request customers’ personal information,” says NHTC Network Administrator Rusty Bright. “It appears that the individuals who have sent these emails want to use NHTC email addresses to mass-email, or spam, hundreds or thousands of people.”

Any financial or other personal information kept on a member’s email becomes vulnerable as well.

Bright says if a member is in doubt about the legitimacy of an email, they should not respond to it.

“If you think the email is not from us, we don’t mind you calling and asking,” Bright says. “We simply are not going to ask you for a response in email.

“If we send out a survey, it will be written and either in The Communicator or mailed,” Bright continues. “We can’t reach all of our customers via email because all of our customers do not have email so it’s just not something we would do.”

Bright says most importantly, members should always be alert and aware of who they are in contact with online. “And please,” he adds, “if you are suspicious of an email that appears to come from NHTC, give us a call.”

If you receive a suspicious email, call Rusty Bright at 256-723-4211.