Avoiding Telus email scam

Photo: Brian Tostenson

A local Telus customer received a fraudulent email claiming to be from Telus.

UPDATE: March 1, 4:15 p.m.

Telus says the email scam Brian Tostenson received doesn't appear to be very widespread at this time.

Liz Sauvé, communications with Telus, says small things can be noticed that differentiate a legitimate email from a fake one.

"The clues would be that our logo wasn’t used, our company named was spelled ‘Telus’ vs. ‘TELUS’ throughout the email, and the way the customer was addressed was odd: Dear Telus Member: [email protected]," Sauvé said in an email. 

Sauvé says Telus' security team works to track down fraudsters but it's challenging when they're outside of the country. 

ORIGINAL: Feb. 28, 7:30 p.m.

A Kelowna man is raising the alarm about an email scam he managed to avoid, but he's concerned others may not be so vigilant.

Brian Tostenson, a Telus customer, recently received an email claiming to be from Telus, asking him to update his contact and credit card information.

“My spider sense went off,” said Tostenson.

He called Telus, who informed him that the email was a scam

“I almost opened something that was going to cause me problems,” Tostenson said. “If you don't look at the actual email address, it looks like Telus all over it.”

While relieved he avoided the scam, Tostenson was disappointed with the response he got from Telus.

“They made me wait a half an hour for me to tell them they had a problem and they didn't give a sh**,” he said.

“You should be letting your customers know that something's going on.”

Tostenson says he would like the rest of the community to be aware of the scam.

“Hopefully nobody else gets nailed on this before it gets out to the world.”