Hoax E-mail Strikes AIB’s Internet Banking Customers

Security news received from Ireland have reported that Allied Irish Bank (AIB) of Ireland is cautioning its customers to be wary of an intricate scam trying to trick them into giving away their personal information, as reported by Herald on December 24, 2008.

The reports about the hoax e-mail state that scammers are looking for AIB customers to submit their information like e-mail address and password, residence phone number, PAC (Personal Access Code), card number, name and address on card, birth date, card's expiry date, CVV and Active Code Card PIN.

Security analysts said that the scammers have created a spoof AIB Internet banking page in the hope that it would dupe customers into believing they are on the real AIB page. As a result, the scammers are attempting to execute a phishing plan.

Phishing, as security experts describe it, involves online fraudsters who send spam mails to extract private information from innocent users.

According to the reports, in the current phishing scam, hoax e-mail requests AIB online banking customers to click on a link to access their accounts and confirm any probable invalid login efforts. The e-mail says that AIB was temporarily restricting the recipient's account, which, according to AIB, is false.

In reality, on learning about the alleged e-mail scam, AIB issued a security advisory for December 2008. In that advisory, AIB asks its clients that in case they receive any spoofed e-mail they should ignore its links as well as not enter any information, rather they should forward the message to alert@aib.ie and then remove it from their mailbox. This should be done without clicking on any given link(s) or opening any similar attachment(s) in the e-mail.

The advisory further urges AIB's Internet banking customers to understand that the Bank never asks them to feed in either their online banking login particulars or their access codes over e-mail.

Meanwhile, the reports say that the AIB Internet Banking team has asked the AIB iBusiness Banking users and the AIB online banking users to contact them via a protected contact form, or to call them by dialing their customer helpline numbers.

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» SPAMfighter News - 1/2/2009