Hardy Telecommunications has been made aware that several area residents received a suspicious email on March 4 purporting to be sent from us. This suspicious email came in various forms, but in essence it falsely used Hardy’s name to convince the recipient that Hardy Telecommunications was sharing a file with them. It asked recipients to click on a link and then enter their login information to retrieve the file from Zimbra or a similar email client.
THIS EMAIL WAS NOT SENT BY HARDY TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND WAS NOT GENERATED BY US IN ANY WAY.
Anyone who entered username and password information and/or clicked on the link in the email is urged to immediately change ALL of their usernames and passwords for ALL of their accounts. The samples of the email that we’ve seen appear to be classic username and password harvesters used by criminals. If the sender, falsely posing as Hardy Telecommunications or a trusted company or person, gets you to enter your information, they will then likely use that information to make fraudulent purchases or commit other criminal activity on your account. Any accounts – such as Amazon, credit card companies, etc. – that use the same usernames or passwords might be compromised.
We also recommend that anyone who received the suspicious email conduct a scan on their computer and all devices for malicious programs like viruses. Several free virus programs, such as Windows Security, Malwarebytes or Lookout, can scan your computer and devices and remove malware and spyware.
Again, these fraudulent emails, making it appear that Hardy Telecommunications was asking you to enter username and password information to retrieve a file, were not sent by Hardy Telecommunications. Hardy Telecommunications would not ask anyone to submit confidential information in such a manner. We strongly urge anyone who received such an email – there is no way for us to know how many people might have received it – to change all of their usernames and passwords immediately for all of their accounts on any platform.