Computer Security Articles

Recently, most of us are receiving emails regarding Bank Account and Credit Card
Statement and verification process regarding credit card such as American Express, Visa and Master Card.

Typically these are all HOAX. Banks and credit card companies does not authenticate
someone's information via email, instead only promotions and other related activities are sent via this communication.

The email disguises as From Customer Service, Technical Support and so on. With the message of "Technical Services Ongoing," "Software Upgrade," "Verification Etc..." It is asking you to visit a link to start the procedure of the process.

HOW TO DETERMINE

First, as said earlier, banks or credit card company's never solicit any information via -email.

Second, determining a hoax is very plain and simple. All email comes with a link that will lead you to a certain page where a form to be filled up is residing. This form contains blank fields for your input such as name, address, telephone card number and other useful information related to you and your bank account.

The trick is, these scammers hosted this forms or we called it "fake pages" on their local machines or sometimes they

will host it to a cheap hosting company, most of them does not provide a domain name (bankname.com). A redirector or IP address is enough for the link to work.

Below is the example of the email I have received. Notice that when I moved my cursor on top of the link, it gives me the ACTUAL IP address of the link which is very suspicious. Typically if it was originating from the genuine Bank, it will give you the exact link as of bank's domain, like "service.bankname .com"

DO THE TRICK

What will I do if I received an email like this? I would rather call the bank to verify if there are really instances like the one stated in the email. I would rather go to the banks home page and see on their updates. I would rather forward the email to the banks customer support. This is the best way we can do to avoid this scams.