Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Phishing

Here is an e-mail that I receive from time to time:


Dear Customer
....... is working to increase the security of all Internet Banking Users.
To ensure the integrity of our online payment system, we periodically review certain accounts.
Your account might be placed on restricted status due to a number of invalid login attempts.

Restricted accounts continue to receive payments but they are limited to certain Internet banking features.
To initiate your Internet Banking Confirmation Process, please click below:

Account Reference: (0x3d.0x38.0x4e.0xcf)

This email (including any attachments) is intended for the above-mentioned person(s). If you are not the intended recipient of this email, please delete this email immediately. It is private and confidential and may contain legally privileged information.



Too bad that I do not bank with ......!

I omitted the name of this bank because it could as easily have been any other bank. I have friends who believed this to be genuine and responded with their banking details. A few weeks ago one lost all of his university study loan from his account - withdrawn within minutes of responding. A faceless trickster has shattered the life of a promising student. It is so easy to do this within the anonymity of a computer - the perpetrator probably does not even think of it as crime because it does not have the element of face to face violence. But it is deeply evil.

2 comments:

Barbara said...

I agree - it's evil in the worst sterile way. I get the same emails and they look so legitimate, but I've become so cynical that I NEVER click on a link in an email. Instead, if I suspect it might be real, I go directly to the website and sometimes make a phone call - using a number I got from the website I went to directly. It's so sad we have to become so suspicious and cynical and go to such great lengths. What a waste of time and energy! (Can you tell you touched a nerve?)

Steve Hayes said...

I get lots of those too. However, if you hover your cursor over the web site they tell you to go to, you can see that it bears no resemblance to any address likely to be that of the bank.

If its a bank i have an account at, or even know, I usually forward such messages to their fraud department. I got a spam SMS from my bank yesterday, warning me NEVER to respond to such messages, as they never ask their customers to do that.