I keep getting email from Peacock telling me that my subscription has expired, but then offering to extend it without me having to pay anything. That’s tempting, but I’m leery about entering my credit card number on the site. What’s the scoop here, Dave?
Let’s call this email what it is right up front: A scam. Whether you subscribe to the Peacock streaming TV channel or not, the group that sends these spam messages – and I get a couple every single day! – have no idea nor do they care. In fact, even if you wanted to, it’s impossible to start or extend your Peacock subscription because they have nothing at all to do with the company. Your email program should have been able to flag it as spam, actually, so you might check to see if that’s enabled.
As with much in our digital life, you need to be a bit of a detective to recognize this scam, however, but there are warning signs all over the place if you look carefully. But scammers of all types rely on the fact that you will have a panic response and turn off your critical thinking until it’s too late. You aren’t doing that and by emailing me to explain what’s going on, you’re doing the one thing that scammers hate; slowing the process down. Again, to be definitive, it’s a scam, do not click to “extend” your subscription. Let’s have a closer look…
THE EMAIL OFFER: EXTEND YOUR PEACOCK SUBSCRIPTION
As I said, I get these email messages with frequency but fortunately, the Gmail spam filter is excellent and catches every one. Here’s the latest I received:
They include the Peacock logo and graphics, so it seems legit at first glance, and who doesn’t want to “Extend for Free!”? Except there are all sorts of red flags even in this message. The biggest is the warning that it’s going to prompt you for a credit card number “for validation of your Peacock ID”. Isn’t that the purpose of your account password, validation? If it’s from Peacock wouldn’t it also include your name and zip code, at least, to prove it’s from the company?
Finally, I have to laugh at “We will not withdraw any amount.” Please, never trust email. If it says something like this you can bet that it will do exactly the opposite, and probably with breathtaking speed, buying hundreds of dollars worth of Best Buy, Home Depot, or Amazon gift cards most likely. Why those? Because they’re untraceable and cannot be canceled once purchased.
But what about the small print on the bottom? Always worth reading, I’d say:
“This is an advertisement”? Isn’t it a reminder to extend your Peacock subscription? No, it’s not. This is where you can immediately conclude it’s safe to just flag it as spam and delete. Do not, however, click on the unsubscribe link because that unfortunately, in the logic of the spammer, just puts you into a “gullible” bucket and you’ll get more junk mail like this.
Before we leave the message, note that there’s a tiny triangle adjacent to your name (if you’re in Gmail. Other email services have similar ways to see more about the sender). I click on it in Gmail and learn that:
Companies do sometimes use third-party email sender services, but “qcibnwbidzn.us” seems rather unlikely. Notice that the sent by is my email address not theirs. Another common trick spammers use to get that “Trusted sender” label. It also entered the email system “mailed-by” utale.uk.net, which again has nothing to do with Peacock which is at peacock.tv.
SO WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DO CLICK?
In the interest of science, I went ahead and clicked on the “Extend for Free!” button to see what happened. First landing page is most assuredly not Peacock or any part of the National Broadcasting Corporation:
When you see a URL buried in random letters like this it often indicates that the scammer has hacked into the server and created a hidden subdirectory to obfuscate the online path. I asked Microsoft Copilot AI about the domain and it reported “The domain name swiftsellsphere.com has raised concerns regarding its credibility.”
The page displayed shows:
Nothing too alarming yet, but enter some junk and click “Next” and you’ll bounce through a couple more URLs and end up here:
Every time it bounces the chance of this being a scam goes up by about 99%. On this page is the real reason for all of these hoops, the key information that the scammer wants, whether you have Peacock or not:
If this were legit, it would certainly show how much is about to be billed, and if it were fulfilling the original “we won’t charge you” promise it would affirm that on this page. Shipping? They need your street address and zip code to confirm a transaction or twenty that they’re poised to submit within a second or two of your clicking “Next”.
DON’T ENTER YOUR CREDIT CARD ON ANY RANDOM WEB SITE!
The easiest rule is to never enter any payment information based on a link in an email message. If you did have a Peacock subscription, for example, just go to peacock.tv, log in, and check your subscription status. Easy enough and far safer than trusting a highly questionable email message that just shows up in your inbox. Notice how I didn’t link to peacock.tv here either? Because I can easily show you one thing but take you somewhere else. Instead, just get used to typing in a URL occasionally to maximize your online safety.
Hope that clears up any questions you have and gives you some tips on how to vet other messages you receive to ascertain if they’re possibly legit or subtle – or overt – scams. Be careful and be skeptical.
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about online scams for many years. Please check out my spam, scams and security help area while you’re visiting. Thanks!