Phishers Aim At The Members of American Credit Unions

Internet is flooded by the plethora of malicious e-mails that purport to have originated from various American Credit Unions. All these e-mails are nothing but a well thought after phishing scam, wherein cyber miscreants are attempting to gather credit union members' personal & confidential information.

The Telcom Credit Union of Hawaii is warning people about this recent outburst of e-mail scams. The latest phishing scam came in to news on 20 February 2007. FBI is inquiring about the source of these bogus emails, said the credit union.

Among the most recent bogus e-mails, some pretended to have originated from Black Hills Federal Credit Union. These fake e-mails asked the members of credit union to open a link & fill up the online form therein.

The form, not a genuine one, was designed for tricking the members in to supplying enough of personal & financial information to the cyber criminals. Once the miscreants have that information, there's nothing that can stop them from stealing the money from the members' accounts in credit union.

In this entire mess, the good news is that only a few members have been caught under this trap so far, Carol Brown, Rapid City based credit union's marketing manager, divulged in news published in Rapid City Journal.

Scammers haven't got much for their endeavors, and they've probably moved on towards other targets. Brown went on to say that the intention of these scammers isn't to make merely a few hundred dollars, and this is what they've got so far.

IU Credit Union members encountered a scamming incidence of the same kind. As part of the scam, students, faculty, and the staff of IU received e-mails. The fraudulent mails said that the credit union had detected some errors in their credit accounts owing to some illegitimate activities. The e-mails urged the recipients to click on a (fake) link to the website of IU.

On 21 February 2007, the students, faculty members and staff received fake e-mails purportedly originating from USC Credit Union.

Originating, apparently, from the address of usccreditunion.org the malevolent e-mails directed the recipients to a replica of USC Credit Union website. The replica asked them to key in their username & password.

However smart let the miscreants be, the Credit Union has taken immediate measure so as to save students from falling prey of such attacks and also to help those who've already been victimized by it.

Related article: Phishers Expand Their Sphere of Attacks

» SPAMfighter News - 3/1/2007