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Trusted Bank E-mail Account Used for Sending Phishing Messages

A phisher hacked into one of the e-mail accounts of First National Bank of Bellevue and sent out phishing messages to the institution's customers, according to Softpedia news published on May 26, 2008.

Like always, the main objective of the e-mail scam was to gain the users' trust and get them to disclose their confidential financial details like security credentials and bank account numbers so that the phishers could withdraw funds from the victims' accounts. phishing is a technique to obtain personal information from online surfers by sending fraudulent e-mails supposedly from authentic sources like financial institutions, particularly banks.

However, the First National Bank of Bellevue scam is somewhat different from the conventional ones in which users are asked to go to a special Website. For in this attack, the phishers tried to contact the victims over phone, requesting for personal details under the pretext of bank account reactivation.

Albeit police authorities are trying to trace the telephone number, it is not known how many users have been victimized. According to the Port Clinton police, the phishing e-mail appears legitimate as it comes from an Id of the bank. Further, the e-mails have been found everywhere between Port Clinton and Sandusky, the police said.

Conventional phishing attacks have established to be very dangerous particularly for people who are without any security protection. But even with a suitable one, it might be pretty difficult to remain safe from these phishing attacks unless users realize their inherent danger and not give away personal details.

Hence, police and bank officials have advised users to remove all sensitive information from their computers as a computer virus could enter the system and read the stored files by intercepting keystrokes or by scrutinizing its hard drive. Users have also been advised to erase information relating to National Insurance PIN or account numbers from their PCs.

Moreover, computer security specialists at the security firm Symantec said that Internet criminals devised over 700,000 new methods of stealing personal identities from end-users in 2007. Also, such private banking data are now being traded on the parallel economy of the Internet even for small amounts.

Related article: TRUSTe Certified Websites May Still Contain Malware

» SPAMfighter News - 6/5/2008

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