GPC Holders Beware of Phishing Emails - Schriever Air Force Base

A military base of the United States Air Force in Colorado, Schriever Air Force Base, has warned the Government Purchase Card Holders to beware of phishing emails trying to target them recently.

It should be that Government Purchase Card (GPC) is a globally used credit card distributed by single contractors and accessible to personnel in every federal department. GPC comes under an individual General Services Administration (GSA) agreement. The main aim of the card is to reduce the paperwork, with suitable authority, expenses around $25,000.

A particular scam email circulating on the Net states that Schriever Air Force base is evaluating its accounts, and has found some error in the recipient's email account. Hence, the recipient is asked to furnish his account number and password. It is also mentioned that Schriever Air Force Base will verify the account, rectify the errors and inform the recipient.

Jim Chapman, Agency Organization Program Coordinator for the Government Purchase Card program, revealed that the motive behind such scam emails is to make the customer to furnish their account details, as reported by schriever.af.mil on July 22, 2010.

This method is called "phishing" and is getting popular among the scam artists as this is an easier method to get important information.

Mr. Chapman and Jacque Donley, Alternate AOPM at Schriever, said that it was a disturbing fact that GPC cardholders and approving officers had detected such emails in their mailbox in 2010. During the last six months from January-June 2010, scammers had hacked the GPC system, as per Mr. Chapman. Hence, it was now necessary for the card holders and approving officers to check their respective GPC accounts weekly.

Apart from this, the cardholders should keep in mind that any email asking for information could be a threat to the security of their Internet. Secondly, an email written in a poor way can be a potential phishing email.

As per the security experts, phishers usually involve extremely technical language in the mails to fool the recipient into trusting them. An email could be a phishing attack if it describes the Internet security such elaborately (like the above mentioned case), experts added.

Related article: GPG Flaw Allows Attacks Resembling Phishing

» SPAMfighter News - 8/5/2010