This recently happened to someone close to me, though I'll not disclose whom. I've heard of "scams" and "identity theft," but this was the first time I had ever heard the term "phishing." Pretty evil, if you ask me.Phishing
Last modified: Friday, March 11, 2005
(fish´ing)
(n.) The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely
claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the
user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft.
The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are
asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit
card, social security, and bank
account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and
set up only to steal the user’s information.
For whatever reason, a local credit union appears to be the target of this scam. When confronted by a victim, the union employees seemed baffled, were very unhelpful and claim to be unable to determine WHERE the money was sent, once it is taken.
YOUR MONEY could easily be taken from your account, should you fall prey to this phishing scam, and be sent over-seas or anywhere... and leave you out in the cold. Now, the credit union is FDIC insured, but may claim you "gave your information (and thus your money) away."
VISA has a commercial out saying if your card is ever stolen, you'll get the money put back into your account. But what about victims of THIS crime?
So, all someone has to do is copy and paste your banks logo, type up a convincing e-mail requesting information from you... and you get taken for everything. Doesn't sound like much fun, does it?
Be on your guard. And when it comes to finances... be OFF of the net.
That's my 2 cents anyway...
8 comments:
Just copied several bank logos. Took less than a minute. Isn't there some way to prevent people from doing that? There's gotta be!
Phishing has been around for several years, however, some of the earlier attempts were rather amateurish with such things as badly mispelled words and crude templates. They have gotten better. If you get an html email from a financial institution that looks "official" you should check the source code to see if the URL is actually an embedded one that sends the user to the criminals website.
The main thing to remember is that financial institutions never send emails asking a customer to verify their account information.
Here's a good site to learn more and to report Phishing attempts:
AntiPhishing.org
Thanks, Pancho. Good site to know about.
But the thing about this is: my friend KNEW about this stuff. Hell, we talk about it all the time! It's just this particular scam was that damn good. When I saw it for myself... I almost fell for it!
Double checking is, of course, smart. But damn this was slick...
I'm one of the many who fell for it. I am totally amazed how I did, but I did. I work in a field that exposes me to see the damage caused by people making foolish mistakes. I have a risk management mindset. I even within the last six months had visited and printed out numerous Web articles on identity theft for a close friend whose wallet was stolen. I feared they would be too nonchalant in protecting themselves and didn't understand the ramifications of what bad things can happen.
These people are getting very, very good at stealing our money and sending it overseas. And we don't even know who "These people" are or what country they belong to, nor is there any assistance available to find that out, or even say, "I don't want my money going outside of the USA, even if they have my blood. I don't do business out of country and probably never will."
It's disguised as a technological crime, and that's part of what makes them successful. We will not be able to stop it technologically, and doubtful that we can stop it through education alone.
This is a very frightening situation. Please don't ever think it can't happen to you. They want your information and your money, and they will probably get it sooner or later. When they do, what will you do?
It's in the millions. We are sending billions of dollars overseas to unknown organized crime cartels. No one has been able to tell me that my money did not go to terrorists.
That's the bad part: no one knows a damn thing. For all we know, Bill Gates has people working on this 24/7 and is just giving them a cut in some off-shore account? Who knows?
Columbians?
Romanians?
Chinese?
Muslim?
Icelandic?
Who knows who is behind this? More importantly, what is being done?
"stupid" has a good idea with marking on your accounts: "No money goes overseas. Period. End of discussion. Check Yes or No."
How difficult is that? And then you have to either take the money with you, use a credit card or have a different account to draw from. But for those of us that never go outside the U.S. and have no intention on it, it sure would bring a hault to this sort of thing, yes? no? Yes.
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