phishing text alert

[#1]

 I received the following text today from 'TeamPlusnet':  "Hi Steven, we don't seem to have your right email address.  Update it here at 'x' to win £250 in John Lewis vouchers.  Full details at 'y'."   x and y are web addresses I deleted.  As plusnet provide and run my email address it clearly impossible that they don't know it.  I tried to find a way to report this to plusnet but I cannot find a customer services email address on the site to report it to.  So I'm just warning via the forum

[#2]

It seems to be genuine. Does look very suspicious though.  I did cast caution to the wind and click on the link on my phone.  It goes to the PlusNet site.  I then retyped the un-obfuscated web address into the browser on my PC.  It asks you to sign on and sure enough there is no email address showing.  Bit odd.  I'm guessing this is a way of harvesting our email addresses for marketing purposes as they WILL have our email addresses already!  It asks which methods we want to be contacted by.  Text, mail, email etc.

As I say a bit bizarre.  But I guess they MAY have lost my email address as I didn't get the email last year about the price increases?

[#3]

I'd be somewhat careful following texted links down - the more sophisticated phishers are adding links that point to pages on a legitimate site that contain malware etc. The twist is that these pages are time-limited and effectively self-erase and therefore escape the attention of website admins. Going through bit.ly links gives the phishers the ability to dynamically change the target to a new (infected) page (again time-limited) - it gives the sysadmin guys a short-lived moving target if they detect it at all...
Texts are a favourite distribution mechanism as they (a) are less likely to be held up in transmission, (b) have a higher chance of immediate response and (c) the "Team PlusNet" header is far more difficult to verify than a spoofed Email address.
Why was I suspicious ? Plusnet absolutely don't have my mobile number & I had the same text. Best avoided imo.

[#4]

I have confirmed via a Facebook conversation with PlusNet that this is a genuine text.  The clue was that it was customised to our names. PlusNet must have your mobile phone number from somewhere, maybe when reporting a fault?

On the general warning though, you are correct, always treat such messages with suspicion.

Also, I'm not sure how my ISP managed to 'lose' my email address, but I haven't been receiving price increase messages for some time.  My guess would be a failed software update or other system problem at PlusNet.

[#5]

Thanks for the replies.  Hopefully Plusnet monitor their fora and will see that this method of approaching customers is causing concern.  I'm still not going to reply as it is impossible for Plusnet to have lost my email address when it is plastered all over my details in the Member Centre

[#6]

I had the same thing a few days ago, asking me to update my e mail address as they appear not to have the full details, I checked my account details, and its in there correctly, I contacted PN who said its not impossible, but not likely it came from PN, and to be honest I got the feeling that he could not give a [-Censored-] about it, just told me to ignore it, iasked him to escalate this matter to confirm the origination  of the text, I supplied PN with full details of the text inc the address links, so far no responce from them, so confirms my suspissions that they dont give a [-Censored-]