Orange Savings Bank Cautions Residents of New Phishing Scam

Orange Savings Bank situated in Orange, Texas, has issued a warning to its customers to look out for phishing e-mails that claim to be from the bank and seek personal information. The bank has asked its account-holders to ignore these e-mails.

Phishing involves delivery of fake e-mails to surfers on the Internet and purporting to be from a genuine source usually a bank. These e-mails include malicious tools such as malware or links that lead users onto a fake Website where their private details like password, credit card number etc., are stolen.

Meanwhile, Orange Savings Bank has said that large numbers of calls were received from clients and non-clients throughout the day, asking the meaning of unsolicited e-mails and calls, they thought came from the bank. However, it has warned the callers not to follow any of the instructions the e-mail outlines, as they are nothing but false.

The message in the purported e-mail warns people about an attempt of fraud against Orange Savings and provides a link for completing a security application. But on following the link, the user reaches a site that is not of the bank. And on that site, the user is asked to furnish his credit card, account and PIN numbers. Clearly, this is for phishers to sweep the user's account.

Orange Savings also said that the fraudsters are randomly selecting their potential victims, but do not use the bank's data. Stephen Lee, President of Orange Savings Bank, said that the bank staff together with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been battling against phishing frauds for past three months (March-April 2008), as reported by KFDM on June 9, 2008.

Orange Savings is thus advising everyone who receives such kinds of e-mails or phone calls to simply erase the messages as the bank never sends e-mails to customers for verification of their account details or to demand their private information.

Phishing scams on the Internet has been quite damaging for the Internet surfers as the customer in the US lost worth $1.2 Billion due to fraud in 2007.

Related article: Orange Network Runs Into Rough Weather After Hacking

» SPAMfighter News - 6/23/2008