Six Cypriot Account Holders Lost 80,000 Euros to Phishers

According to news from Cyprus Mail, Cyprus, published on July 24, 2008, it was found that six Cypriots lost 80,000 Euros from their bank accounts in the last six months ending June 2008. These individuals were using the Internet to do their financial transactions.

According to reports received so far, the victims of the electronic crime were tricked to give away their private codes for online banking when they received an e-mail supposedly from the banks with which they held their accounts. The crime, known as a phishing attack, involved criminals stealing personal information of the bank customers so that they could easily withdraw any amount from those customers' accounts.

Thus, Head of the Police Financial Crime, Unit,Chistoforos Mavromatis, for whom dealing with phishing is basic on his agenda, urged everyone to be cautious.

Mavromatis explained that such crimes mostly occurred abroad from where the criminals would send messages electronically to end-users of various countries giving them an impression that the messages were from their banks. Typically, the messages said that there was a problem with the recipient's account, or that the bank was checking its security systems while claiming them as the reasons for deactivating the user's account, as reported by Cyprus Mail on July 24, 2008.

Mavromatis added that recipients are then directed to click a link, which takes to a Website resembling that of the bank. Subsequently, the recipients are asked to enter personal banking codes, which the criminals absorb and apply on the actual bank site to steal funds from the victims' accounts.

According to Mavromatis, probing into cases of Internet fraud can be difficult as the culprits leave no clues for trace and simply disappear, as reported by FRAUD WATCHERS in May 2008.

Significantly, while this is a case of Cypriots being snared in phishing schemes, other news reported of banks being phished or defrauded in hacking attempts by hackers who infiltrated the systems and stole the customers' details.

In addition to the above phishing instances, other phishing schemes that commonly lure Cypriots are the familiar lottery scam or the Nigerian scam.

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» SPAMfighter News - 8/2/2008