Phishing email doing the rounds masquerading as SmarterMail

Beware! Phishing email doing the rounds masquerading as SmarterMail

Through this blog post we would like to change our customers on a phishing or Spam email currently doing the rounds. This is a Phishing email that appears to be coming from SmarterMail itself. However, this is not the case. Let's discuss in this blog post how to recognize this and how to verify that with your email address is otherwise okay.

SmarterMail

SmarterMail is the software that MijnHostingPartner.nl uses for its email. So it will not be a stranger to a lot of users. However, the message being sent is definitely SPAM. And the mail will in almost all cases be flagged by the SPAM filters and marked with MHP-SPAM-MED in the subject of the message. So this is already a very targeted sign that something is not quite right. Any mail you receive directly from SmarterMail is not legitimate! In fact, this is not how SmarterMail communicates to its end users. Communication from SmarterMail always goes through an intermediary such as MijnHostingPartner.nl.

What exactly is in the Phishing email?

Like more Phishing emails you are asked to download an attachment which can be used to inject a virus / malware into your computer or host. This is in no way desirable and will under no circumstances be requested by us or SmarterMail. The only notification you will receive from us from SmarterMail are notifications about the consumed space running low. But even this does not go through such email addresses. See later in the article exactly what this does look like.

See at the screenshot below how the mail goes around:

So the above you should best delete it as soon as you receive it. This is not legitimate mail and will cause damage if you follow the instructions.

Learn to recognize and stop SPAM and Phishing mail (as much as possible)

Everyone who uses a mail address should be wary of receiving mail at all times. Recognizing SPAM and Phishing is a (now) indispensable skill that can save you a lot of headaches.

Preventing receiving SPAM as much as possible starts with your DNS records. You can set these in such a way that they will catch a lot of SPAM. Because this is so important we made an instruction video which explains this even more. So dive in here and also explore the extensive knowledge base articles we have created for this. These explain in detail how the DNS can ensure that you receive less SPAM and protect you even further.

Further measures you can take often also apply to your website. Do not mention your email address on the website in plain text. For example, first ensure that a Google Captcha needs to be entered. This way, you also stop a lot of SPAM from your website itself.

The standard SPAM filters are also active. You recognize these SPAM messages quickly because in suspicious messages immediately 'MHP SPAM' is placed in front of the subject. You can also filter these e-mail messages by moving them directly to a SPAM folder.

Legitimate mails from SmarterMail which can be received

There are some email messages that you do receive from SmarterMail, or more specifically from the System Administrator. So in these messages, it clearly states on the screen that 'System Administrator' is the sender of this message. This is an automatic account within your own domain name that ensures that changes can be made through both the client and control panel. Keep in mind that MijnHostingPartner.nl or SmarterMail will never ask you to download anything.

A notification that does occur more often is the mail account becoming full, most people fill in 500 Mb for this, for example. With a few years of email this can quickly become full. You will get a notification about this. This is easy to increase, as long as you have space available in your package. Not sure how much space you have left? Ask us via a ticket which you can create via the customer panel.