Phishing E-mails Reaching Postbank Clients’ Inboxes

Last month, on February 23, 2011, Dusseldorf, Germany's Consumer NRW alerted that one fresh surge of fake e-mails were targeting people who had accounts in the Postbank. TOnline published this on February 24, 2011.

Designed to phish users' off their information, the fake e-mails try to steal account details as well as transaction numbers. Actually, they display the caption "Attention -Account Problem" and direct the recipient that he must click a given web-link, which, however, takes him onto a phishing site since there he's asked for feeding his PIN and TAN (Transaction Number).

Unsurprisingly, anyone by just looking at the website will barely be able to differentiate it from the actual Postbank website. Also, users landing on the spoofed site are told that they require registering on it for locking their TANs. Radio k.w published this on February 24, 2011.

Evidently, security specialists are on job, as it's very easy to confuse the fraudulent phishing site with the actual website for Internet banking with Postbank. Different from previous instances, the current phishing site doesn't have spelling mistakes alternatively pictorial differences.

Nonetheless, according to consumer advocates, if anyone gets the above kind of e-mail he should erase it instantly as also never follow its given web-link. Stated Annabel Qelmann, the consumer facility's financial expert, when customers demand financial services of serious kind, they aren't replied via e-mail. Verivox published this on February 24, 2011.

Moreover, officials at Consumer NRW emphatically suggest that if any end-user has already typed in the requested information into the phishing site then he must get in touch with his bank soon and ask for a changed PIN. And incase of anybody who has had his money lost owing to the phishing scheme, that person must instantly notify the police.

In the meantime, the specialists on Internet safety stated that since December 2010 when consumer centers started issuing early alerts on fake e-mails, consumers reportedly received much beyond 1,000 dubious electronic mails. The latest incident indicated another problem i.e. the German banking institutions' iTAN process launched many years back for lessening phishing assaults, didn't safeguard from account theft.

Related article: Phishing With A Redirector Code

» SPAMfighter News - 3/7/2011