Bank Phishing Scams Rising in Nigeria

Nigeria has been witnessing more and more phishing attacks ever since the country stepped up its facilities for electronic banking. Banks like GT Bank, UAB or United Bank of Africa, which lead in providing convenient and easy service delivery, have unknowingly attracted Internet fraudsters', particularly phishers' attention, say security researchers.

A fraudulent phishing e-mail targeted UAB during December 2009. It stated that a change in the account details of the recipient (customer) had come to the Bank notice.

Consequently, UAB was tentatively restricting the person from using his account for withdrawing and transferring funds. Meanwhile, the Bank would conduct appropriate confirmation procedures by the account holder. The user should verify and reconfirm his account information after following a web-link provided in the message.

Another bank targeted in Nigeria by an e-mail scam during December 2009 was GT Bank. The related phishing e-mail told the recipient (an account owner) that during some recent months, the Customer Account Security Team of the Bank had been getting excessive complaints regarding funds withdrawal. Hence, for security reasons, the Bank had decided to deactivate the user's account.

The message then claimed that to protect the particular account, the user should confirm personal identity through a web-link that was actually linked to a phishing site.

With fraudulent or phishing e-mails like those just mentioned as well as others of similar kind increasingly reaching Internet users' mailboxes, the security analysts have concluded that phishers or bank fraudsters have mastered the act of cloning e-mails from the banks' actual e-mails. They now use the banking terminologies perfectly, imitate logos, and exactly duplicate the bank e-mails' general style. All these are to convince gullible bank customers into providing certain information such as their PIN, the analysts note.

They also note that online fraud such as phishing, which is a worldwide problem, needs to be curbed. This is possible through education. Thus, banks should train their staff about online banking so that e-mail scams can be thwarted, the experts suggest.

Related article: Bank Issues Spam Alerts

» SPAMfighter News - 1/13/2010