BEWARE of Phishing Scams and Email Fraud!
Recently, a client received a fairly official looking email from what appeared to be the IRS. Upon closer inspection, it was not from the IRS at all. Instead, it was a bogus notice fraudulently posing as the Internal Revenue Service. The attempt was to acquire social security numbers and personal financial information.
NOTE: The IRS does not send email. The IRS will never email you asking for information.
To protect yourself from these email scams, you should understand what they are, what they look like, and what you can do to avoid them.
The following recommendations can minimize your chances of falling victim to an email scam:
Many email scams have existed for a long time. In fact, a number of them are merely “recycled” scams that predate the use of email. The FTC has a list of the 12 most common scams. (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/1998/07/dozen.shtm). The list includes:
Phishing emails can be especially dangerous. While crafted to look as if they have been sent from a legitimate organization, like our client’s fraudulent “IRS” email, these emails attempt to fool you into visiting a bogus web site to either download viruses or reveal personal information.
For instance, an email can be crafted to look like it is from a major bank. It might have an alarming subject line, such as “Problem with Your Account.” The body of the message will claim there is a problem with your bank account and that, in order to validate your account, you must click a link included in the email and complete an online form.
Phishing emails are often sent to hundreds of recipients. Believing the email to be real, some recipients will click the link in the email without noticing that it takes them to a web address that only resembles the address of the real institution. If the email is sent and viewed as HTML, the visible link may be the URL of the institution, but the actual link information coded in the HTML will take the user to the bogus site. For example,
Visible link: http://www.yourbank.com/accounts/
Actual link to bogus site: http://itcare.co.kr/data/yourbank/index.html
A bogus site can look astonishingly real. The site may present an online form asking for information like your account number, your address, your online banking username and password—all the information an attacker needs to steal your identity and raid your bank account.
Carefully examine any email from your banks and other financial institutions. Most have instituted policies against asking for personal or account information in emails, so you should regard any email making such a request with extreme skepticism.
Phishing emails have also been disguised in a number of other ways. Some of the most common phishing emails include the following:
Be aware that fraudulent activity exists and that you may be a target. Be skeptical of emails that seem out of character for a government agency, bank, or legitimate business. Take caution so that you are not a victim of a phishing scam.
For further reading: www.ftc.gov
