If you receive the e-mail below, do not answer it.
SCAM.
********************

Attention hughes.net Account holder,

This message is from the Database Information Technology service messaging center, to all our e-mail account holders. All Mailhub systems will undergo regularly scheduled maintenance. Access to your mailbox via our mailportal will be unavailable for some period of time during this maintenanceperiod.

We shall be carrying out service maintenance on our database and e- mail account center for better online services. We are deleting all unusede-mail accounts to create more space for new accounts.

In order to ensure you do not experience service
interruptions/possibledeactivation Please you must reply to this email
immediately confirming your hughes.net email account details below for
confirmation/identification

1. First Name & Last Name:
2. Full Login Email Address:
3. Username & Password:
4. Confirm your Current Password:

Failure to do this may automatically render your e-mail account
deactivated from our emaildatabase/mailserver. to enable us
upgrade your email account, please do reply to this mail.

Thanks.
Upgrade Team

ANY email purporting to be from a service provider of any sort, including ISPs, banks, utility companies, etc is ALWAYS a scam if it tells you to reply directly to the email. Such providers ALWAYS tell you to contact them via normal methods. And especially so if you are asked for your password - this is NEVER requested by responsible organisations.

That said, it's frightening how many gullible people there are out there who DO respond to these sorts of scams.

I got this same message (3 times) from ATT regarding my mail also. Almost the exact wording. Phishing at it's best! I forward these messages back to my provider to make them aware.

They are getting a bit more sophisticated. When this first started, words were miss-spelled and the English was quite clumsy.

Tipoff is always, if they are your provider, they already have ALL of that information (and more) and should have no need to have you verify it. When they upgrade the software, it is generally transparent to the user until they sign on.

People also buy swampland in Florida and on Ambergris Caye.
They sent money to Jim and Tammy Baker, invested millions with Madoff, bought shares in a gold mind in Honduras and believed that a 1200 tract house a 2 hour commute from LA was really worth the $400,000 they borrowed on it.

If it's too good to be true, it's not good or it's not true.

I'd like to commend those people that are in business every day who are honest and ethical - because they are out there too. Ethics won't make you the richest one in the room, but generally you'll have a solid business base and make it through hard times better than the jerks.

To those of you who are doing the right thing I'd like to say - keep it up, and THANK YOU.

I know with paypal one of the tip offs is that if the email is really from them they use your full proper name to address you no dear sir or madame. They also have a spoof email so you can send stuff and they will try to help stop the frauds.

That's true, but Paypal are themselves untrustworthy in other ways.