Identity Theft Written by Radha Khalsa
Identity fraud tops Federal Trade Commission’s list as nation’s fastest growing crime, registering 43% of last years 380,000 complaints. Many of these cases were perpetrated through Internet. Affected companies include Bank of America, AOL, MSN, eBay, PayPal, and even IRS.The Bank of America scam came through email, asking receiver to go to website to verify their personal or financial information. When enclosed email link is clicked, receiver is taken off to a look alike website where they are asked to enter their name and account number. Another fraudulent email tells AOL users that their credit card has been declined and they must supply a new credit card number within 24 hours or their account will be shut down. Others have received an email from eBay. The Identity Theft Resource Center (www.idtheftcenter.org) posted following email on their site: Dear eBay Customer, Your order has been completed and will be mailed within 24-48 hours. Your credit card has been charged $1460.50 for following purchase... ( Micron Pentium III Computer ) Plus shipping and handling. If you feel that your credit card has been billed wrongly, please visit our site and fill out all needed information to cancel following order. http://ebayservices-cancelorder.cjb.net
| | Email Spam and PhishingWritten by Radha Khalsa
It seems like volume of email spam has doubled in last month. Increasingly, we receive daily emails for better mortgage rates, pharmaceutical discounts, and offers to enlarge body parts we don’t even have.The next generation of sophisticated tools is available to email spammers. Hidden code can be embedded into email allowing sender to track it. A “spam beacon” lets sender know that this is a valid, live, email address. The sender can also tell if you’ve opened email before you tossed it. “Nearly half of all spam is bugged with so-called "spam beacons" for tracking users who open junk mail, said e-mail filtering firm MX.” The latest email scams have also evolved. The newest scams are called phishing attacks. Spammers copy and paste web coding, making their email message appear to be official. They provide links to “look alike” websites where they try to trick you into revealing your personal financial information, by asking you to update an account such as Ebay, PayPal or CitiBank (or other well known entities). Phishing attacks are successful 5% of time.
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