Phishing E-mail Hits Wells Fargo Customers

According to financial firm Wells Fargo located in San Francisco, California, USA, a new e-mail claiming to be from the firm and requesting the recipient for his latest account details is clearly a phishing scam.

Mike Fox, Local Official of Wells Fargo, said that the e-mail message is from outside sources trying to get private account details from recipients to use them for gaining illegal access to the corresponding accounts, as reported by MyPlainView on January 30, 2009.

Moreover, the e-mail pretends to have come from "Accounts Management" while its subject displays "Official Message from Wells Fargo". The message, which addresses the members of Wells Fargo Bank, claims that the bank has come to know that there is need for updating the recipient's bank account. The updation, message states, is part of the company's continuous effort to safeguard the member's account as well as to minimize the cases of fraud via its website.

Continuing further, the message requests the user to spare 5-10 minutes to update his account records so that any problem with his future online experience with Wells Fargo could be avoided. Moreover, once the records are updated, there would be no interruption in the company's online banking service and it would continue to run as usual.

However, on carefully inspecting the site, one would find that the data submission form it presents relates to an outside script rather than Wells Fargo. It is possible that the data submitted comprising username and password is e-mailed to the scammer. Moreover, after the user submits the data, the site displays the message, "incorrect password". Here an innocent victim might think that the message is due to the unauthorized access indicated in the 'phishing' e-mail.

Meanwhile, the bank authorities have informed consumers that Wells Fargo would never request for account information over e-mail. In addition, people must protect their private information such as account details, social security number and other sensitive information.

They also advised anyone getting suspicious e-mail relating to Wells Fargo must get in touch with the bank so that it can alert the fraud division of the company.

Related article: Phishing With A Redirector Code

» SPAMfighter News - 2/15/2009