South Africa Experiencing Rising ‘Phishing’ Expeditions

According to SABRIC, the South African Banking Risk Information Center, the total number of e-mail scams that trick online banking users into releasing their confidential information is on the rise.

Explain security specialists that this tactic called 'phishing' takes place when cyber-criminals distribute e-mails posing as communications from banks or other financial institutions to end-users, making the latter reveal personal information like usernames, passwords, or payment card details.

States SABRIC that these authentic looking phishing e-mails especially disturb the region's banking sector. They, according to the Center, are suggestive of the perpetrators' well-orchestrated malicious schemes.

Says Kalyani Pillay chief executive of SABRIC, banking sector database that the Center manages indicates that during the past 4 months, there has been quantitatively a threefold increase in phishing websites that attacked customers of local banks. However, the banks have been able to spot and disable these sites, Ms. Pillay informs. SouthAfrica.info published this on February 10, 2010.

Disturbingly according to the security researchers, by the time banks are able to disable phishing websites for stopping additional clients from getting victimized, the fraudsters exploit the stolen data they gathered from their actual owners.

Ms. Kalyani adds that this has not happened earlier and simply shows the scale at which the onslaught is spreading.

SABRIC further states that phishing e-mails today no longer only talk about the customary falsified computer security warnings from banks, consumer awareness details, or other associated notices to deceive bank customers into visiting a fraudulent or spoofed website.

Since many customers have now gotten wary of the falsity of these kinds of e-mails, phishing e-mails are evolving with newer contents. For example, messages posing as communications from the South African Revenue Service so lured victims with tax refunds that they willingly provided their banking information.

Hence, Ms. Pillay urged recipients of e-mails asking for financial information and who had responded with their banking details to report the incidents to their banks. Times LIVE published this on February 9, 2010. The CEO said that banks never dispatched e-mails asking clients to give their updated details via logging into their websites through a given web-link.

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» SPAMfighter News - 2/17/2010