Image: Brett Jordan
On Friday afternoon, many Australian Twitter users were asking whether to trust an email asking people to confirm their accounts.
The online consensus was fast coming to the conclusion it was all a scam — a very good recreation of legitimate emails from Twitter — when the social media network fessed up that it was responsible.
“Some of you may have recently received an email to “confirm your Twitter account” that you weren’t expecting. These were sent by mistake and we’re sorry it happened,” the company said on its support account
“If you received one of these emails, you don’t need to confirm your account and you can disregard the message.”
Last month, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said Australian businesses reported losing more than AU$14 million due to payment redirection or business email compromise scams to Scamwatch, with losses in 2021 set to be five times higher.
In 2019, 25,000 phishing scams were reported to Scamwatch, with only 513 reported as resulting in financial loss, valued at AU$1.5 million. Nevertheless, phishing was the most popular scam method.
