Security Experts Discovered Emails Impersonating American Express

Phishing emails impersonating credit card provider American Express, more popularly known as AmEx, are currently making rounds on the Internet and hitting innocent Internauts, warn security experts, as reported by emailanswers.com on October 14, 2013.

Fake emails entitled "Fraud Alert: Irregular Card Activity" addressing the patrons as "Dear Customers" tell them that American Express (or AmEx) noticed irregular activity on the user's American Express card on 1st October, 2013 and hence he (customer) must verify his account before he continues to use his card. On completion of confirmation, American Express will remove all restrictions that were placed on the user's account. To verify his account and information, the recipient is asked to click on the: https://www.americanexpress.com contained in the email. The patron is warned that if his account information isn't updated within 24 hours his access to his account would be limited. Hence, he is advised to act promptly by American Express.

Experts analyzing this scam email campaign comment that clicking on the link contained within these emails, will direct the duped customer to a fake American Express website which will ask him to sign-in with his username and password. And if he falls for this ruse and signs in, his user ID and password on this fake website, it will be sent to the scammers and then these scammers will gain access to his account with his username and password.

Unfortunately, it is due to phishing attacks of these types that phishing persists to be one of the common types of criminal activities. Hence, be careful of any unwanted messages which instruct you to click on a link or open an enclosed attachment to correct a supposed issue.

Security experts advise you to report about AmEx phishing scams by submitting details of the same on the company's official website.

American Express repeatedly states that it never sends any unsolicited email asking customers to click on a link to update account details. Moreover, genuine American Express emails will always greet customers by their names and never use generic terms such as "Dear Customers" as used in the above case.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/22/2013