A New Wave Phishing Scams Is On The Rise

Posted by Ken

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I just can’t see why some people are into scamming others. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been receiving emails warning me that there has been some “unauthorized activity” on my Bank of America account. The message reads as follows:

Your Online Banking is Blocked
Because of unusual number of invalid login attempts on you account, we had to believe that, their might be some security problem on you account.
So we have decided to put an extra verification process to ensure your identity and your account security.
Please click on continue to the verification process and ensure your account security. It is all about your security.
Thank you.
Continue To Online Banking
© 2007 Bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved.

Well, first of all, the likelihood of Bank of America contacting me with a grammatically incorrect and very brief email is not very high. Phrases like “…verification process to ensure…” and “…click on continue to the verification process…” stand out like a sore thumb. Maybe that’s my journalism degree coming out, but geesh, what a telltale sign.

Second, I don’t have an account with Bank of America. And lastly, but most importantly, the link (deactivated above) goes to a totally unrelated website. How do I know this? By rolling over (not clicking!) the link you can check out the address in your lower left corner of your browser (I’m using Firefox, but that’s most commonly the area you’d find that information).

A number of things could have happened if I had clicked on the link (which I didn’t go to by the way). One example might be that a virus could have been downloaded to my computer or perhaps spyware. In addition to that, if I had entered my information on whatever form I would have been given, which most likely would have been my credit card information and login, then the criminals would have the keys to my kingdom.

The take-away here is to just be careful when you receive emails like this, especially if they are coming from a merchant you have done business with before.

[tags]phishing,scams[/tags]

Scams