FDIC Warns About E-Mail 'Phishing' Scam
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The FDIC on Friday issued an alert  about an increasingly common e-mail scam designed to steal  personal information and money from millions of unwary  consumers.
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(InfoWorld) - A bogus e-mail message supposedly sent by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission contains spyware and targets corporate and banking executives as well as consumers, the FTC said Monday. The bogus e-mail poses as an acknowledgment of an FTC complaint filed by the recipient and includes an attachment. E-mail recipients who open the attachment to this e-mail can download malicious spyware onto their computers, the FTC said. Recipients shouldn't open the e-mail; instead they should delete the message, the FTC advised. The hoax e-mail is personalized, containing the name of the recipient and their business. The bogus message explains how the complaint will be used and says, "Attached you will find a copy of your complaint. Please print a hard copy of the complaint for your records in the upcoming investigation." Consumers can learn more about protecting themselves from malicious spyware and bogus e-mail messages at OnGuardOnline.gov, a Web site created by the FTC in partnership with other federal agencies and the technology industry to help consumers stay safe online. The site includes information on spyware and phishing.
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Information on individuals has been collected in a scam using e-greetings that appear to come from a secret admirer.
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By Kerry Duke  Customers of Fifth Third Bank are being barraged by Internet scam artists who have fired off millions of e-mail messages in the name of the bank to try to trick customers into revealing personal identity information, the bank and law enforcement agencies say.
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Phishing is one of the fastest-growing forms of personal fraud in the world. While consumers are the most obvious victims, the damage spreads far wider--hurting companies&#39; finances and reputations and potentially
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Tool that identifies Web sites pretending to be connected to banks, eBay, etc., could help leave phishing scammers dead in the water.
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(InfoWorld) - TheÂ FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is warning of fraudulent e-mails that appear to come from the FBI and U.S. military. "The IC3 has increasingly received intelligence of fraudulent schemes misrepresenting the FBI and/or Director Robert S. Mueller III," the center said in an alert published Tuesday. "The fraudulent e-mails give the appearance of legitimacy due to the usage of pictures of the FBI Director, seal, letterhead, and/or banners." The spam is actually pumping lotteries or are phony inheritance notifications, the IC3 said. Other scams use the FBI's name to "intimidate and convince the recipient the e-mail is legitimate," the IC3 said. Criminals have used the agency's name in extortion e-mails and online auction scams as well. The IC3 is a clearinghouse for complaints of criminal activity on the Internet. Run jointly by the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, it works with other law enforcement agencies and industries to help crack down on illegal online activity. In a separate statement also issued Tuesday, the IC3 warned that scammers were also sending out fraudulent e-mail claiming to be from U.S. soldiers stationed overseas. "The scam e-mails vary in content; however, the general theme of each is to request personal information and/or funds from the individual receiving the e-mail," the IC3 said. The e-mails are variations on long-running scams such as the Nigerian "419" spam, which has been "surprisingly effective at extracting large amounts of cash from victims.," said Adam O'Donnell, a senior research scientist at antispam vendor Cloudmark. "Users have to be aware that anyone asking for your bank account information via e-mail, regardless of their stated reason, is trying to steal your hard-earned money," he said.
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Scammers are sending out virus-laden e-mails claiming to have information on complaints filed with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the FTC warned Monday.The e-mail appears to come from frauddep@ftc.gov -- a spoofed address -- and it includes a malicious attachment that downloads keylogging software, which is used to steal sensitive information such as passwords and account numbers.&quot;While the e-mail includes the FTC seal, it has grammatical errors, misspellings, and incorrect syntax,&quot; the FTC said in an alert , released Monday. &quot;Recipients should forward the e-mail to spam@uce.gov and then delete it.&quot; E-mail sent to this uce.gov address goes into the FTC&#39;s spam database, which is used by investigators.Online scammers often masquerade as government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service in the hopes of tricking unsuspecting victims into clicking on attachments or visiting malicious Web sites.
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The tricky business of thwarting online fraud Logistic and technical issues have hampered the rollout of a system designed to thwart phishing scams by UK bank Barclays.â¦
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Italian authorities are bringing charges in a scam involving fraudulent e-mail to bank customers.
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Security experts are saying that a well-intentioned effort by the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General to combat phishing may backfire.Earlier this week, State Attorney General Anne Milgram called on four banks -- Bank of America, Citibank, Washington Mutual, and New Jersey-based Sun National Bank -- to provide her with details on how they respond to phishing incidents.This is a good move that will probably raise awareness about phishing, observers say. However, Milgram also asked the banks to send e-mail to their online customers, warning them that the bank has been a recent target for phishing scams and offering advice on how to tell fake e-mails form the real thing.That raised a red flag with anti-phishing experts.&quot;The New Jersey Attorney General asking the banks to send out another e-mail to clients is opening up ... those banks to be phished yet again,&quot; said Paul Laudanski, leader of the Phishing Incident Reporting and Termination squad project. &quot;I can see the phishers writing in a new e-mail scam campaign &#39;The New Jersey AG has asked us to inform you that you have been phished, please click this link to secure your account.&#39; Trouble, trouble, trouble! This is a setup for failure,&quot; he wrote in an e-mail message.Dave Jevans, chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group said that while he applauded Milgram&#39;s effort to educate consumers by inquiring directly with bank CEOs, he &quot;would have preferred that the Attorney General waited to hear back from these banks before issuing a request to send e-mails out to all their customers. That type of e-mail can set the stage for waves of copy-cat phishing,&quot; he said via e-mail. &quot;If the phishers send out fake e-mails of this type before the banks get to it, there&#39;s a potential problem.&quot;Even Katherine Tassi, Washington State&#39;s assistant attorney general, said she thought there could be problems. &quot;Consumers are already confused enough about whether e-mail from a bank is authentic or not,&quot; she said via e-mail. &quot;A lot of banks do, in fact, communicate by e-mail to their consumers, which is something that makes the problem worse.&quot; That&#39;s because consumers become more trusting of the e-mails, even messages that may be from a malicious source.Milgram&#39;s spokesman, Lee Moore, said that banks should use every means possible to educate their customers about phishing -- including e-mail. &quot;Banks need to compete with the phishers in the customer&#39;s e-mail box with the right message,&quot; he said.The New Jersey AG has been receiving more and more phishing complaints of late and is coming to view the phenomenon as a growing concern, Moore added.As of late Thursday, his office had not heard back from any of the banks.
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By The Roanoke Times  'Phish' are biting   !-- 2013(unknown) --> don't take the bait  Several Roanokers were among those who received "phishing" messages in  the name of the Wachovia bank chain on Wednesday.
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Tool that identifies sites pretending to be connected to banks, eBay and more could help leave "phishing" scammers dead in the water.
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(InfoWorld) - Hackers are trying to play on business' fear of legal action from customers to trick them into downloading a harmful program distributed through e-mail. The e-mails purport to come from the Better Business Bureau, an organization that monitors and arbitrates disputes between consumers and businesses in the U.S. and Canada. The e-mails assert that a customer lodged a complaint against the recipient's business, according to a warning on the Web site of Websense, a security vendor. The e-mails contain aÂ Microsoft WordÂ attachmentÂ with the text of the supposed complaint and instructions for how to respond. But embedded in that document is a keylogging program that captures data on the victim's computer and then uploads it to a server in Malaysia. The keylogger is purposely mislabeled with a ".pdf" extension -- Portable Document Format -- another widely used document format, to make it look harmless, said Henry Gonzalez, Websense's senior security researcher. The trick is another variation of so-called "social engineering" methods used by hackers, which entice users to unknowingly install harmful programs on their computers. A Better Business Bureau branch warned of a similar kind of attack in February. At that time, the e-mails contained hyperlinks to malicious Web sites. Some kinds of malicious software can be installed on a user's computer merely by viewing a site engineered to exploit a vulnerability within a Web browser. The latest attack, using the Word document as the delivery vehicle for the malicious software, is a tactic hackers are increasingly employing. Â ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Internet fraudsters have developed a sophisticated new method of using e-mails to capture internet banking customers&#39; details.
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Scammers are using fake electronic greetings to lure recipients to malicious sites.
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With consumers finally getting wise to phishing attacks, scammers are hitting the phones.The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation&#39;s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) warned Thursday that so-called &quot;vishing&quot; attacks are on the rise. These are scams where criminals send an e-mail or text message to a victim, saying there has been a security problem and the victim needs to call his or her bank to reactivate a credit or debit card.&quot;Upon calling the telephone number, the recipient is greeted with &#39;Welcome to the bank of ...&#39; and then [is] requested to enter their card number in order to resolve a pending security issue,&quot; the IC3 said in its alert.In the past few years, inexpensive VoIP&#160;technology and open-source call-center software has made it inexpensive for scammers to set up phony call centers, paving the way for these new types of scams. Security experts say that vishing can be more effective than traditional phishing techniques -- which direct victims to fake Web sites -- because the voice-based attacks have not been as widely publicized.A new vishing scam involves sending text messages to cell phones, instructing victims to contact the fake online bank to renew their accounts, the IC3 said.Those who are unsure whether they have been targeted by this scam should look up the bank&#39;s phone number and call the bank directly, the IC3 advises.Operated in partnership with the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, the IC3 is a clearing house for Internet crime complaints.