You may have been a victim of identity theft and not even know it. This often undetectable crime occurs when a person steals your personal information for financial gain. With personal information like your social insurance number, credit card info, internet password, date of birth or your address, criminals can open bank accounts, reroute your mail, rent an apartment and fraudulently apply for credit, all in your name.
The FBI, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Earthlink have jointly issued a warning on how the growing ranks of Internet crooks are using new tricks called "phishing" and "spoofing" to steal your identity. In an FBI press release, Assistant Director of the agency's Cyber Division, Jana Monroe says, "Bogus e-mails that try to trick customers into giving out personal information are the hottest, and most troubling, new scam on the Internet. The FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) has seen a steady increase in complaints that involve some form of unsolicited e-mail directing consumers to a phony "Customer Service" type of web site. Assistant Director Monroe said that the scam is contributing to a rise in identity theft, credit card fraud, and other Internet frauds.
The Internet plays a role in identity theft. Today, attention is focused on a scam called “phishing.” Phishing refers to a practice where someone misrepresents their identity or authority in order to induce another person to provide personal information over the Internet. Some common phishing scams involve e-mails that purport to be from a financial institution, Internet Service Provider, or other trusted company claiming that a person’s record has been lost or needs to be updated. The e-mail directs the person to a website that mimics the legitimate business’ website and asks the person to enter a credit card number and other personal information such as passwords so the record can be restored. In fact, the e-mail or website is controlled by a third party who is a crook who attempting to extract information that will be used in identity theft or other crimes.
Some of these scammer’s sites look like they came from legitimate sites. ‘Link alteration’ involves altering the return address in a web page sent to a consumer to make it go to the hacker's site rather than the legitimate site. This is accomplished by adding the hacker's address before the actual address in any e-mail, or page that has a request going back to the original site. If an individual unsuspectingly receives a spoofed e-mail requesting him/her to ‘click here to update their account information’, and then are redirected to a site that looks exactly like their Internet Service Provider, or a commercial site like EBay or PayPal, there is an increasing chance that the individual will follow through in submitting their personal and/or credit information.
FBI Tips on How to Protect Yourself
• If you encounter an unsolicited e-mail that asks you, either directly, or through a web site, for personal financial or identity information, such as Social Security number, passwords, or other identifiers, exercise extreme caution.
• If you need to update your information online, use the normal process you've used before, or open a new browser window and type in the website address of the legitimate company's account maintenance page.
• If a website address is unfamiliar, it's probably not real. Only use the address that you have used before, or start at your normal homepage.
• Always report fraudulent or suspicious e-mail to your ISP.
• Most companies require you to log in to a secure site. Look for the lock at the bottom of your browser and "https" in front of the website address.
• Take note of the header address on the web site. Most legitimate sites will have a relatively short internet address that usually depicts the business name followed by ".com," or possibly ".org." Spoof sites are more likely to have an excessively long strong of characters in the header, with the legitimate business name somewhere in the string, or possibly not at all.
• If you have any doubts about an e-mail or website, contact the legitimate company directly. Make a copy of the questionable web site's URL address, send it to the legitimate business and ask if the request is legitimate.
• If you've been victimized, you should contact your local police or sheriff's department, and file a complaint with the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center at http://www.IFCCFBI.gov. In Canada, you can contact the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Phone Busters at the Ontario Provincial Police if you live in Ontario. Other Canadian provinces have similar contacts you can treach.
What follows are some of the messages I got in my email box recently.
Webmail Security March 18, 2010
We are currently up-grading and doing some re-programme work and this may lead to the loosing of your Webemail, to prevent this send your Username ******)EMAIL Password*******) to our re-programme helpdesk (webmailsupport@btinternet.com) otherwise your account with us will be closed down.
March 11, 2010
Rogers Communication Technical Support Unit 2010 wishes to inform you that there is a congestion in your account; this is due to Phishing mails and Internet spam. You have been contacted so that you will confirm your account to avoid losing it to Internet spam. Please fill the Technical Support Form below and send it back to enable us update your account.
* Username:............
* password:............
* phone:...............
Or click on the below link, for better security.
http://rogerswebmail-upgrade.co.cc/
Insight Broadband Technical Support Unit is open for help, information, technology and many more. Thanks for your
understanding.
We apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused you!
Sign,
Technical Support Unit
Rogers Communication
Copyright © 2010 Rogers Communication
Account Alert March 8, 2010
Dear Valued Member,
Due to the congestion in our Rogers! servers, there would be removal of all unused Rogers! Accounts. You will have to confirm if your E-mail is still active by filling out your login info below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.
Your personal information:-
User name:...............................(example@rogers.com)
Password:.................................
Date of Birth:.............................
Country :...................................
After updating your account information, your account will not be interrupted and will continue to work as normal. Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Warning!!!Account owner that refuses to update his or her account before two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.
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™Rogers is a trademark of Rogers Communications Inc. used under license. ®Yahoo!, the Yahoo! logos, and other Yahoo! product and service names are the trademarks of Yahoo! Inc. used under license. Other brand names and logos are the property of their respective owners, used under license or with permission.
Please do not reply to this message. This is a service e-mail related to the use of your Hi-Speed Internet. Please read the privacy polices of each of Rogers and Yahoo! to learn more about how Yahoo! and Rogers use your personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based e-mail. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089. Rogers Cable Communications Inc. is located at 333 Bloor Street East. Toronto, Ontario M4W 1G9.
MY COMMENT
On February 17th March 6th and 9th 2010, identical messages appeared on my email sent to me, one by a Cindy Barda. As you can see from the one below, their wording is different.
Dear Account User
Due to the congestion in all ROGERS.COM users and removal of all unused ROGERS.COM Accounts, We would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons. please send detail of login via:
* User name: .........................
* Password: .........................
* Date of Birth: .....................
* Country Or Territory: ......
After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences.
Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.
Sincerely,
The ROGER.COM MAIL
MY COMMENT
I have received a number of these so-called messages that are purported to have been sent to me from my cable company. I called my cable company and they said that the messages are being sent to everyone who subscribes to that company. How they know who the subscribers are, is beyond me unless the scammers are just mailing the messages to everyone in the area.
In February 2005, data broker ChoicePoint revealed it had sold data on at least 145,000 Americans to criminals posing as officials in legitimate businesses.5 Contrary to initial press reports, ChoicePoint’s computers were not hacked. Instead, the criminals opened about 50 accounts with the company and THEN accessed the data as customers.
I am still getting on occasion, messages telling me that I may be the recipient of the estate of someone who is deceased. The fact that the name of the deceased is unfamiliar to me, tells me right away that it is a scam.
Grace Ace March 17, 2010
Dear Sir / Madam,
My Name is Mrs. Grace Ace, Corporate Secretary to Tony Murray & Co., London - United Kingdom. We are conducting a Standard Process Enquriy on behalf of the Management of an European based Financial Institution. This investigation involves a client (Mr. Watford) and the circumstances surrounding investments made by this client at the said Financial Institution..
The Financial Institution client who died "intestate" nominated no successor in title over the investments made with the Financial Institution worth £3.350M GBP (Three Million, three Hundred and Fifty Thousand Great Britain Pounds).The essence of this communication with you is to request you provide us information/comments on any or all of the four issues:
1- Are you aware of any person or relative / relation in the person of Mr.Watford, whose last known contact was Scotland?
2- Are you aware of any investment of considerable value as stated above made by such a person at the Fund / Treasury Department of the Financial Institution?
3-Whose age was mid 50's
4- Can you establish beyond reasonable doubt your eligibility to assume status of successor in title to the deceased?
*** If you can't provide us information / comments on any or all of the four issues. -- Are you willing to co-operate with us by given us your consent to present you to the Management of the Financial Institution as the successor in title over the investments. It is pertinent that you inform us asap whether or not you are willing to co-operate with us that we may put an end to this communication with you and our inquiries surrounding this personality.
Thank you for accommodating our enquiry. Mrs. Grace Ace. Corporate Secretary "Tony Murray & Co." 25 Bridge Street, Staines Middlesex TW10 8TP, London, United Kingdom Tel: +44-702-4098825 & +44-702-4098522 Confidential E-mail: tonymurray_co@sify.com Please let us know your view via our Office Confidential E-mail as thus: tonymurray_co@sify.com NOTE: For security reasons always quote the above Reference Number:CAP/FI/EU/346/08) in every one of your correspondence with this office ***PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL***
This e-mail and any attached files are from "Tony Murray & Co." and are confidential and may be legally privileged. If you are not the addressee, any disclosure, reproduction, copying, distribution, or other dissemination or use of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error please notify the sender immediately and then delete this e-mail.
E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error free as information can be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. "Tony Murray & Co.", therefore does not accept any errors or omissions in the contents of this message which arise as a result of e-mail transmission.
MY COMMENT
The message appears to be legitimate on the surface but the giveaway is obvious. First of all, the spelling is wrong in some words, second of all, asap is properly written as ASAP not asap since it is the first letters of the words, ‘As Soon As Possible’. The three words “an European based” should be written as “a European-based...” By addressing the message to Madam/Sir tells me that they have no idea who I am.
Be very careful to whom you open the door to your commuter. Just as you wouldn’t let a stranger enter your home and then give him personal information, you should treat the stranger who comes to the door of your computer and wants to come in and get you to give him or her all your personal information with the same caution.
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