APACS warns against phishing mail

The figures reported by the UK payments association APACS show that online banking popularity underwent a significant growth among  adult customers in the country increasing 505% from less than 3.5 million in 2000 to just over 21 million last year; while frauds related to online banking transactions decreased 33% in 2007 on a year-over-year basis. Yet in the association’s opinion there is still a substantial danger of various kinds of phishing and spyware scams aimed at customers’ computers as the banks’ system proved more resistant to fraud attacks.

In light of these considerations APACS released a Banking Safely Online advice guide intended to help customers stay on the alert against online fraud when banking in the Internet.

The guide published by the association contains the general information about most frequently met online scam and the ways to avoid it.

Most common feature of all scam messages is that the scammers address to a customer in a general way instead of doing it personally which reveals that the person behind the letter does not know the customer’s real name and personal information. Such messages are usually addressed to ‘Dear valued customer’.

The association warns against replying to the messages as this may lead to putting a PC at risk of attack from malicious computer viruses.

Besides, banks never sent letters to their customers enquiring about PINs, login details or complete passwords – this personal data request in most cases is a crafty trickery.

And one more kind of online fraud is targeted to human cupidity when e-mail messages contain seductive offerings to make easy money simply by transferring funds in and out of customers’ online account. This may be related to money laundering which is illegal.