Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait Warns Customers Against New E-mail Scam

A warning has been issued about a fresh phishing scam targeting people for their banking information. Understandably, the fraudsters are circulating a fake e-mail that pretends to be a message from the online banking department of BBK (Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait).

The e-mail, which informs customers that their online banking accounts are close to expire, suggests that if users want to continue with their accounts, then they ought to reactivate the same by following the given link.

Furthermore, the e-mail states that the user must fill in, change or add the authorization passwords of beneficiaries properly and ignore the alert notice, which gets displayed while following the link. However, the link leads the user to a phishing website in place of the actual website of the bank.

Thus, BBK warned that the e-mail is a fake and people should overlook it. It also said that the scheme, which is related to phishing, is clearly a deception designed for the theft of customers' identity as well as for phishing off personal information from them, such as credit card, account numbers, passwords, etc.

An official of BBK said the bank wouldn't ever ask its accountholders to confirm their information or provide any up-to-date details via e-mail, web-links, pop-up messages or SMS.

The official also said irrespective of whether one is a BBK customer or not, the phishing fraudsters dispatch mass scam e-mails with an idea that even if a small percentage of recipients respond with their financial and personal information, it would yield quite an advantage for them.

Besides, a few years back, the phishing fraudsters were targeting the worldwide mainstream banks instead of the banks of the Middle East. But now even those banks are being attacked, with phishers targeting leading banks in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Lebanon. The frequency of such attacks within this region has also increased.

In a similar incident happened in May 2009, HSBC Middle East had also sent out a 'phishing' alert in the UAE, after customers got e-mails supposedly from the institution asking for their account numbers.

Related article: Bank Issues Spam Alerts

» SPAMfighter News - 6/11/2009