Is this a new type of email scam?

Last night I received an email scam, pretending to be from Xfinity, saying that my monthly payment did not go through, and wanting me to click on a link (I reported this to Xfinity's abuse address and also through Spamcop).

The weird thing this, is when I first opened the email in Thunderbird (without formatting), it showed that all the words were misspelled (they weren't). When I opened the email with formatting, the message looked OK. However, if I highlighted the text, there appeared to be a blank vertical line or two going through each word. I think the scammer inserted a character that would not show up, or formatting instruction, in each word, to get around spam filters. It would not recognize these words because of the additional characters or formatting instructions added. Xfinity did not mark this email as spam. I did not bother trying to wade through the message source code, to see exactly what they did.

I'm just saying -- be careful -- scammers are doing some strange things out there.

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XfinityBrianH

Official Employee

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1.9K Messages

3 hours ago

littlepeaks Thank you for reaching out with your concerns! You can never be too careful when it comes to your personal information, I would definitely reach out to a Xfinity representative before clicking any links that seem suspicous! You can also check if your payment did not go through by logging into your account online or the Xfinity app. I would be happy to check for you as well, I would just need to send us a DM with your first and last name and full address where you have service.

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littlepeaks

Contributor

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80 Messages

I'm not sure how to post publicly -- I thought this post could be viewed publicly. My primary purpose of this post was to give you people at Xfinity a heads up about this technique for circumventing spam filters, if you're not already aware of it. As far as payments, I do not make automatic payments, and when I check on something, I log into Xfinity to see what a payment status is.

(edited)

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3 hours ago

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XfinityBrianH

Official Employee

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1.9K Messages

littlepeaks Apologies for any confusion this post is public, and we appreciate you letting us know about the issue. Please let us know if you have any other concerns we can assist you with.

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer. tick

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3 hours ago

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BruceW

Gold Problem Solver

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27K Messages

2 hours ago

I'm not sure how to post publicly -- I thought this post could be viewed publicly ...

You did, and it is. The poorly worded "post publicly" advice in Expert and Employee signature blocks is not directed at you. It appears in all messages they post, and is intended to discourage customers from sending a Private message before they are asked to do so. They should have come up with more reasonable wording for that message YEARS ago.

Please be aware that there are 2 kinds of responses in this Forum: Replies and Comments. When you Comment on a post by scrolling down to "Comment on this post here...", I am notified of your response. But if you select Reply, I am NOT notified and may not be aware of your response.

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Customer Service

littlepeaks

Is this a new type of email scam?

XfinityBrianH

littlepeaks

XfinityBrianH

BruceW

Please be aware that there are 2 kinds of responses in this Forum: Replies and Comments. When you Comment on a post by scrolling down to "Comment on this post here...", I am notified of your response. But if you select Reply, I am NOT notified and may not be aware of your response.

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