Phishing Emails Exploit Turmoil of Bank Sector

The meltdown of the banking sector is being exploited by scammers in order to trick the users of the banks into giving them their sensitive personal financial information. Phishing emails are commonly used as security checks in the form of a prospective bank. In the latest of these phishing emails, scammers are imitating official announcements about merging banks.

These emails will redirect their victim to a website designed to look like a site for the new financial lender or institution, but it’s not. This is actually a bogus website whose aim is to trick the user into giving them their personal information so that the operator(s) can steal their identity, running up their bills or committing crimes in their name. Their way of getting the information is by asking the user to confirm, validate, or update their account information.

Wachovia seems to be one of their main targets, having the second highest number of attacks during September. There have been over 20,000 of these fake phishing sites established in just the first half of the year, which is an increase of 180% since the first half of last year.

The Federal Trade Commission is advising people as to how to be on guard against these kinds of scams. They are working to prevent deceptive, unfair, and fake business practices and to give out information that will help users to spot, avoid, and stop these practices. All of the internet, identity theft, telemarketing, and other complaints related to fraud that are obtained by the Federal Trade Commission are entered into the Consumer Sentinel, which is a secure database online that is accessible by hundreds of criminal and civil law enforcement agencies around the world.

source http://www.mns.co.uk/0121316.html