Phishing Scams Attack Residents in Oregon

A newly launched phishing campaign is attacking people in Oregon to seize their private data by resorting to a widespread fear of errors in tax return, said the Office of Attorney General in Oregon, as reported by Kohd Abc News on May 8, 2009.

Users are increasingly receiving the fraudulent phishing e-mail that poses to be a message from the Oregon Department of Revenue. It says that to remedy the error, the consumer needs to transmit some personal information.

Thus, the Office of the AG is cautioning people not to open any e-mail that arrives from an unfamiliar organization or individual as well as not to click on any web-link from an unfamiliar source. Similarly, end-users should not click on any attachment embedded in e-mails from unknown sources.

The Office of AG further said when the economic conditions are tough, people are forced to put more effort to earn money, but cyber crooks too push up their efforts to extort valuable things from the potential victims. In the present economic downturn, scammers are reportedly sending e-mails to end-users that pose to be from credit card firms and banks asking for updated account details.

Commenting on this point, AG cited another phishing campaign that relates to IRS. In that scam, e-mails are sent allegedly mentioning about some problem with the user's account. Thus, the message claims that for an auditing purpose, the agency needs certain information about the user's personal account. The information asked include the user's name, Social Security number and account number, which once obtained could enable the scammers to harvest more details from the unwary consumer.

However, security specialists stated that no legitimate agency requests for personal details through e-mail. Therefore, if such an e-mail arrives claiming to be from the IRS or any other authorized institution, then it is clearly a phishing fraud.

An IRS agent stated that for common purposes, the agency contacts taxpayers via e-mail, but if it is about a tax refund, then the agency would contact by letter.

Meanwhile, Oregonians have been regularly encountering other phishing assaults for past few months.

Related article: Phishing With A Redirector Code

» SPAMfighter News - 5/21/2009