Internet Alert. Please Read

[Glynnw]

I wanted to alert everyone to a problem my son had this pass week. He does online banking including paying all of his bills that way. A week ago today he had $1600 in his account. By the end of the day his account had 0.
It seems like someone from Turkey got into his computer and took everything out in 5 hours with 300 or 400 dollars at a hit. The bank is not sure how it happened but they are going to replace all of the money. Thats why they have insurance, but it has really created huge problems. He is a cop and does not have a lot of money anyway, so we had to loan him some money to get by until the bank replaces the stolen money. His ATM card had to be relpaced, account numbers changed, direct deposits changed, and any bank drafts had to be corrected, not to say all of the paper work he had to fill out. It has been a nightmare for him and for us.
I just wanted to warn all of you about this and it does happen. If anyone has any idea how this may have happened please let me and everyone on the board know about it. I think one of his problems is he is connected to the internet all of the time. I just heard about a new thing going on called farming. You access a page and it implants a spy in one of your folders. When you send any information, say to your bank, it actually goes to the farmer. I wish these people would get a job and a life. If anyone knows how this happened or how to combat it I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance, GlynnW

 

[Dream]

Do you know what bank he uses?

 

[LongingForLight]

A lot of emails have been going out from people who claim to be Washington Mutual or other banks. These emails ask you to click on a link to verify some information by logging in to your account. However, they redirect you to a fake page instead, so when you log into your account you are actually giving out your password and login. This is called phishing.

If you get an email from your bank asking you to do something, be suspicious: Go to your bank's webpage (by typing the URL into your browser or using a bookmark you set up, not by using a link in the email) and find someone to contact. Ask them if the email is a fraud. Your bank should be understanding, and respond well to your concern if it is not a fraud - they are also hurt by phishing scams. They may even have a link about the email you received if it is a scam.

Edit: This is just one currently common way for scammers to get into your account.

 

[Dream]

A lot of emails have been going out from people who claim to be Washington Mutual or other banks. These emails ask you to click on a link to verify some information by logging in to your account. However, they redirect you to a fake page instead, so when you log into your account you are actually giving out your password and login. This is called phishing.

If you get an email from your bank asking you to do something, be suspicious: Go to your bank's webpage (by typing the URL into your browser or using a bookmark you set up, not by using a link in the email) and find someone to contact. Ask them if the email is a fraud. Your bank should be understanding, and respond well to your concern if it is not a fraud - they are also hurt by phishing scams. They may even have a link about the email you received if it is a scam.

People have done this with EBay and Amazon too in order to get your credit card number.

 

[JMRE5150]

All institutions that deal with money in one way shape or form have been on a worldwide campaign to inform their customers that they WILL NEVER ASK YOU ACCOUNT INFORMATION VIA EMAIL.

This is a prime example of what happens when consumers are unaware of this fact.

Its a shame what happened to him, and we can only pray these thieves get caught.

Folks, warn your family, friends and coworkers NEVER to trust in emails that require "reconfirming" accounts. As stated by an above poster, always contact the company IMMEDIATELY of these attempts. Why? Because they can work with authorities and "pretend" to be an unsuspecting customer, trapping the thieves in the process. But they MUST KNOW ahead of time.

Hope this helps.

 

[Glynnw]

Do you know what bank he uses?

He uses REGIONS, which is mostly located in the Southeast. The bank said they are trying to follow up on who did it since they placed orders on the internet and they will try and track the order to where it is being delivered, problem is thats Turkey.

 

[InnerPhyre]

This happened to me as well, and I take extreme care to keep my information private. I got all my money back as well, but what a pain. It's a dangerous time to be alive.

 

[HisKid1973]

Thanks for the post bro. I got messed up when I responed to a bogus Ebay email :rolleyes .. They cleaned $600 out of my account before closed the account. I didn't loose any money but had to fiil out alot of paperwork. I learned a MAJOR lesson on identity theft. Now I fwd and emails back to ebay or paypal to see if there legit.NOTE , there has been another virus mass mailed out. My hotmail box got 265 emails in 3 hours.. I scanned a couple and they all had the same virus...DO NOT open any attachment before you scan it unless you know the source. Also run spybot search and destroy or another bot checker and also run a good trojan scanner..Make sure you run a scan after you hit a site and hear the hard drive go nuts..YBIC..Kim

 

[Veritas]

Please go to Netcraft now!

http://news.netcraft.com/

Download the free version tool bar (in the middle of the text). When you go to a financial website, you can click on the Site Report in the tool bar and it will tell you the name, country of origin and server info. for the financial institution. This will help prevent what's happening with what is called Pharming (a relative of Phishing) Pharming is when a scam is perpetrated via re-directing your browser (without you knowing it) to a fraudulent website that looks just like the one you want. There they do the key-stroke thing to access you user id's, passwords, account numbers, etc. to steal your money. This is becoming as big as identity theft and potentially bigger. If you discover that the website is headquartered out of a foreign country, that will raise a red flag. Don't transact any business until you check it out with the institution.

 

[Papist]

This is one very good reason to use a Mac or Linux. If you use Windows, youshould use the Mozilla Firefox browser because it is less vulnerable to attack than Internet Explorer.

 

[Gerry Hunter]

Also, beware of wireless home networks. They can be monitored at surprising distances.

Encrypted or not, we only ever do banking on the computer that is hard wire connected to the router (there's typically one in any LAN setup).

Blessings,

Gerry

 

[OnEaglesWings]

Oh how scary! One of the reasons why i'm so scared of doing any kind of business online!

 

[bigsierra]

Very Scary. It makes you think twice. I don't use Internet Explorer to often these days since it lets in so much garbage. It's better than it used to be though, with Service Pack 2.