Telecommunications giant Sky has sent out an email to customers with a link prompting them to change their passwords.

The company has not offered an explanation as to why it has reset its customers’ passwords, but says it is a precautionary measure. However, the company insists that the move has not been prompted by a data breach.

The email reads:

“Dear Customer,

“At Sky we take the security of your data and information extremely seriously. To help keep your account safe we have reset the password for your Sky account. You will now need to chose a new password to access your account. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

Several customers took to Twitter to check if the email was authentic with one user tweeting: “@SkyHelpTeam just got an email telling me I need to reset my sky account password. Just addressed to Dear Customer.

“Nothing to indentify me or show that this is a genuine email. Please confirm that this came from you and is not a convincing phishing email.”

The company quickly responded via its social media accounts to confirm the email was genuine but failed to offer clarity over the reset. While some customers were told that the provider will “occasionally reset the password for Sky accounts”, in order to “help keep customer accounts safe”. Others were told that the move was in response an incident that took place last week.

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Cyber security experts are saying that Sky has handled this incident poorly in terms of incidence response due to the lack of clarity in its communication with its customers.

Joseph Carson, chief security scientist & advisory CISO at Thycotic, said: “The latest news regarding password resets occurring for email accounts with sky.com, as so-called ‘precautionary measures’ that have been taken, indicates that the incident is ongoing and possibly the root cause is still unknown.

“If indeed this was a credential stuffing cyber-attack, then there would be an indicator of a high number of failed log-in attempts, hopefully resulting from some users following best practices by not using the same password across multiple accounts. This is what credential stuffing is trying to abuse using an automated process.

“Sky customers should really start using password managers and two-factor authentications to ensure that a password is not the only security protecting sensitive data.”