Audette Internet Solutions offers
an economical reciprocal linking
program with the goal of obtaining
400 incoming links that are
"hand-picked"
to be of value to your website. |
I have a very good
filter on my e-mail server and most of the
spam I receive gets dumped immediately into
my “deleted items” file. I can then quickly
view all the “sender” names on these files
to see if a legitimate message was
inadvertently placed in the deleted folder
before I erase them all in bulk. This saves
me the trouble of having to weed through
hundreds of messages in my inbox to find a
few “real” messages.
Lately, I’ve been noticing an alarming
amount of messages in my "deleted items"
folder from companies that I regularly do
business with. These include PayPal and
E-Bay.
The latest one I received came from a
company called BankNorth.
I knew something was wrong as soon as I
checked the bank statement I had just
received (on paper) and saw that my
New England bank spelled its name with only
one capital letter…Banknorth.
The text of the message went as follows:
Dear BankNorth.com Customer,
(Tip off #1 misspellings)
During our regular update and
verification of the Internet Banking
Accounts, we could not verify your current
information. Either your information has
been changed or incomplete,
(Tip off #2 poor
grammar) as a result your access
to use our services has been limited. Please
update your information. To update your
account information and start using our
services please click on the link below
(linking information was included here)
AFTER SUBMITTING, PLEASE DONOT ACCESS YOUR
ONLINE BANKING ACCOUNT FOR THE NEXT 48 HOURS
UNTIL THE VERIFICATION PROCESS ENDS.
(Tip off #3 “to give
us time to empty your account!”)
The linking information listed in the
message lead to an IP address of
218.244.98.8/north/index.html. Instead of
clicking on that link, I entered the IP
address in a Networks Solution WHOIS inquiry
and found that it was owned by someone in
Milton, Australia!
I also received the following message
supposedly from e-Bay:
It has come to our attention that your
eBay account was accessed recently from
three different location. Please update your
personal records within 48 hours. Failure to
update your records will result in account
suspension.
The IP address associated with the included
link, to update my account on e-Bay, revealed that
the party receiving my updated sign-in
information was located in Amsterdam.
Other Phishing attacks that I have received
supposedly came from such companies as:
Wells Fargo, Earthlink, Citibank, Washington
Mutual Bank, Sun Trust and MSN.
These phony warnings are called by many
names, among them fakes and spoofs. Phishers
and scam artists have been carpet-bombing
the Internet with these in hopes that a fair
number of them will hit the right targets.
Their goal is to steal your account
information and PINs and they’re often very
convincing. The links they include in their
email messages take you to some very
official and legitimate-looking webpages.
The best advice: Ignore them all and,
never, under any circumstances, “update”
your personal information in response to an
e-mail request. In fact, just clicking
on their link could secretly load a spy ware
program that logs all your keystrokes.
Some clues that messages, such as the two
above, may be fake include:
1. Some sort
of warning for you to act quickly (or your
account will be closed or suspended),
2. Embedded
links that lead to phony sites, (check with
a WHOIS search)
3. Spelling
errors (these help spoofers slip past spam
filters.)
4. Poor
grammar is very common and is another
indication.
Banknorth
gives further explanations and guidelines on
their “legitimate” website:
http://www.banknorth.com/bank/fraud_prevention.html
So the next
time crooks come phishing in your "Inbox"
for your personal information, don’t get
hooked.
You can read more on this topic at:
http://www.antiphishing.org/ |
