King County Residents Targeted with Scam E-mail

USA's King County is cautioning residents of a phishing e-mail scam, which's presently circulating online, while targeting them, published king5.com dated December 15, 2011.

Phone calls to the County from businesses and individuals from inside King County and outside it, including people belonging to other states or nations, reportedly said of callers getting fake confirmation about an Internet payment of property tax conducted via the County's e-commerce mechanism.

Bill Kehoe, Chief Information Officer, King County stated, somebody seemingly replicated the typical e-mail of the County's payment confirmation while changed the caption, making it a message supposedly from King County. But, actually the e-mails weren't from it as also no payments occurred from the recipients' end, Kehoe explained. Tukwilareporter.com reported this, December 15, 2011.

Kehoe further said that the e-commerce system was secured, with strong safeguards for all of the County's IT systems. However, its databases didn't have the e-mail ids reflecting on the phishing e-mail; therefore, King County's inhabitants could remain easy with the knowledge that there was total security of their private data, he added.

Still admonishing residents, King County said that an e-mail notification with the sender's id as KingCountyEcommerce@kingcounty.gov was circulating, which they should lookout for. Besides, its Officials advised that incase anybody hadn't conducted a payment via the County's website, yet got an e-mail from the mentioned id, he should erase the message without viewing its attachment.

The suggestion also serves as a good prompt that no attachment within any electronic mail should be opened unless it has been verified with the person sending it. Moreover, it's good to imbibe e-mails' safety rules, like hovering the keyboard mouse over any given link prior to clicking on it. Doing this'll exhibit the destination URL, which if appears doubtful must be overlooked, add King County's Officials.

Eventually, the County stated that a note would be posted on the website for property-tax submission for alerting the public regarding the latest scam, the 2nd in a row for the County very recently. The other was on December 14, 2011, when King County-located Puget Sound Energy referred to a fake electronic mail notification regarding bill payments.

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» SPAMfighter News - 12/26/2011