South Africa – Banks Cautioning over New Phishing Scam

Brazen Internet fraudsters are hitting upon several unsuspecting Internet users in the new email scam sweeping South Africa.

On August 20, 2007, almost all the important banks issued a warning for the customers of their Internet banking immediately after a surge in the amount of reported 'phishing' mails being sent to customers. These mails look like genuine bank sites and lure the users to leak out their passwords and details of bank account.

In the 2nd last week of August 2007, many Durban Internet users received a fake mail, which appears exactly to have been sent from Absa Bank. But careful study of the Internet address shown on the click through link disclosed that the users have been mislead to an unrelated site made for cheating the users into leaking their passwords by updating the details of their Internet account.

On the other hand, the banks claimed that this is strictly against their policies to send mails to users asking them confirm their personal information online.

Greg Harwood of Nedbank said that this not a new scam and South Africa has become the prime spot for such fake themes. He also added that catching the creators of these attacks is not at all easy, as the phishing sites are made by hacking legitimate sites without any knowledge of the owners. These mails are also sent out in such a way that tracking the originator becomes really tough, as per the news of Legalbrief on August 22, 2007.

As per the Absa Bank, this is an on-going trend and they always try to save their users against it. It also added that mostly it is the case of identity theft, where the phishers displays several emails expecting that someone will reply and give out his private data.

Ross Linstrom of Standard Bank said that as soon as they (hackers) get the details of the customers, they would recognize them and start using their accounts. He said that they have already closed some of these sites, but advised people to be more cautious, as per the news in IOL on August 21, 2007.

Moreover, Absa Bank said that it upgrades its security systems on a regular basis, but the hackers have become too clever and cunning.

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» SPAMfighter News - 9/3/2007