Northwestel Inc. customers are being targeted by an e-mail scam, the telecommunications provider warned this week.

Several people with Northwestel e-mail accounts have received a message requesting their password and date of birth, the company advised in a press release sent out Tuesday.

"We regret to announce to you that we will be making some system maintenance on out northwestel.net Webmail account,” the e-mail reads.

"During this process you might have some login problems in signing into your northwestel.net Webmail account, but to prevent this you have to confirm your account immediately after you receive this notification.”

"This e-mail is fraudulent,” said Northwestel spokeswoman Anne Kenned. "... Northwestel does not solicit this type of information from its customers.”

Scam artists generally collect this type of information to gain access to personal e-mail accounts, then block the true owner's access by changing the password.

Last year, Yukon artist Joyce Majiski fell prey to a similar ruse, this time through her hotmail account.

While Majiski was travelling in Mexico, she received an e-mail purporting to be from MSN, Hotmail's parent company.

"It looked very official,” Majiski recalled today. "It said they were cleaning out inactive accounts and to respond if my account was still in use. I responded with my password. I didn't think anything of it.”

The next day, she was locked out of her e-mail and the red flags went up.

Thankfully, Majiski said, she had another account and was able to contact a friend in Whitehorse to say something was wrong.

She soon found out that several people on her Hotmail list had already received a message saying Majiski had been robbed in London and desperately needed money to get home.

"The language was quite hokey and most of my friends went: ‘This isn't you' and didn't respond,” Majiski said, but at least two people were duped and wired money to the e-mail thief.

"I never asked how much they sent. I think they felt very silly.”

Majiski eventually regained control of her Hotmail account, but she said the whole experience left her frantic at the thought of all the private information the scammer would have access to in her account.

"It's not even like being robbed – you feel totally invaded. You don't even have control of your own identity.”

Northwestel suggests anyone who receives such an e-mail immediately delete the message.

Because most of these scams originate from other countries (the fake Northwestel message tells customers to respond to an e-mail address linked to an India-based provider) there is little local police can do.

Northwestel and the RCMP suggest people go to www.phonebusters.com for more information and to report suspected phone and Internet scams.