Woodlands National Bank Customers Receive Phishing Messages

The branch office of Woodlands National Bank in Cloquet (Minnesota, US) has recently hit the news. The Bank has suffered the impact of a massive phone, email and text message fraud that triggered hundreds of phone calls weekly, as per Local Branch Manager Cindy Vallie, according to the news published by pinejournal.com on June 23, 2010.

The name and logo of the Woodlands National Bank have been used without the knowledge or consent of the Bank in launching phishing attacks aimed at obtaining confidential information from unwary users.

According to experts, phishing refers to imitating legitimate information to deceive users into revealing their confidential personal information. Typically, phishing attack is launched through e-mails, but as per the victim Bank, the current phishing scheme has also used text messages and phone calls.

In majority of incidents, the bogus message notifies the recipients that their online bank account has been suspended for the time-being and asks for the related confidential information in order to restore it.

Interestingly, this phishing scam has not only targeted the customers of Woodlands National Bank but some people who are not the Bank's customers also received the phishing message (through e-mail, text message or phone call).

Generally, if an unwary Bank user reveals his username and password to the scammers, all the money is drained off his account and is usually transferred to some overseas bank accounts, which can be accessed by the suspects from anywhere.

Security experts advised that to avoid being falling for the scam, netbanking customers should themselves type in the Web address of the Bank or they should use their personal bookmark. Normally, the website to which the users are being re-directed by the fraudsters, like in a phishing e-mail, will have a different spelling than the authentic website.

Even then, if a user thinks that he has been deceived by the phishing scheme, he should immediately communicate the same to his financial institution (in this case, Woodlands National Bank). In this way, he can prevent scammers from accessing his bank account.

Users should also remember that while they are logged into their online banking account, they should not open any other website.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/1/2010