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SECURITY ALERTS
FBI Cautions Consumers and Business Owners this Holiday Season
December 10, 2010
This information is being provided as a courtesy to our customers
| The FBI offers these tips on how to protect yourself from cyber scams: |
- Don’t respond to text messages or automated voice messages from unknown or blocked numbers on your mobile phone. Treat your mobile phone like you would your computer…don’t download anything unless you trust the source.
- When buying online, use a legitimate payment service and always use a credit card because charges can be disputed if you don’t receive what you ordered or find unauthorized charges on your card.
- Check each seller’s rating and feedback along with the dates the feedback was posted. Be wary of a seller with a 100 percent positive feedback score, with a low number of feedback postings, or with all feedback posted around the same date.
- Don’t respond to unsolicited e-mails (or texts or phone calls, for that matter) requesting personal information, and never click on links or attachments contained within unsolicited e-mails. If you want to go to a merchant’s website, type their URL directly into your browser’s address bar.
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The FBI wants you to know about a group of cyber scams they expect to be on the rise this holiday season. “Smishing,” a combination of SMS texting and phishing, “Vishing,” a combination of voice and phishing, are of greatest concern because scammers typically ramp up these attacks during the holidays because individuals are traveling and shopping more often, therefore they do not want their ability to pay for things to be interrupted. Also on their list of cautions are unexpected messages or posts to social networking sites and clicking on ads or links from unknown sites or advertisers.
One known smishing and vishing scam shared by the FBI is of great concern to us: when criminals set up an automated dialing system to text or call people in a particular region or area code with messages like: “There’s a problem with your bank (or credit union) account,” or “Your ATM card needs to be reactivated,” and the recipient is then directed to a phone number or website asking for personal information. Armed with that information, criminals can steal from victims’ bank accounts, charge purchases on their charge cards, create a phony ATM card, etc. The FBI said there are cases where victims used their smartphone to log onto phony websites and unknowingly downloaded malicious software that gave criminals access to everything on the phone.
As your bank we want you to know we would never ask you for personal financial information, account numbers or other important financial details in this way because we already have it on file. And if we ever need to contact you about your account, credit card, etc. we will do so using the mailing address you provided at the time you opened the account.
It’s important to note that would-be thieves generally don’t know where you bank. Rather, they randomly choose a local bank and include it in their broad-based message, knowing that statistically some of the recipients will bank there.
While most cyber scams target computers, smishing and vishing scams target mobile phones, and they're becoming a growing threat as a more and more Americans own mobile phones, the advisory said. These scams are also a reminder that cyberscams aren't just for computers anymore. The IC3 is advising users not to respond to text messages or automated voice messages from unknown or blocked numbers.
Other holiday cyber scams to watch out for, according to IC3:
- Phishing schemes using e-mails that direct victims to spoofed merchant websites misleading them into providing personal information.
- Online auction and classified ad fraud, where Internet criminals post products they don’t have but charge the consumer’s credit card anyway and pocket the money.
- Delivery fraud, where online criminals posing as legitimate delivery services offer reduced or free shipping labels for a fee. When the customer tries to ship a package using a phony label, the legitimate delivery service flags it and requests payment from the customer.
For more information about the latest cyber crime scams, visit IC3’s website. For more details about Phishing, visit our Security Center.
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