MoMusings

The phishers seem to be looking from new organisations to target. They no longer seem content to target customers of the usual suspects, such as:

• Banks
• Building societies
• eBay
• Paypal
• Amazon
• eGold

Their latest target is the Internal Revenue Service, yes the dreaded IRS! This is the US equivalent of the UK’s Tax Office, which those of us in the UK really admire, especially their ability to get blood out of stones, and extract every last penny that they can from us .

This morning I received a number of copies of the following e-mail [screenshot below]

This e-mail is a lovely example of social engineering. How many of us lie awake at night wishing for, or have fevered dreams where we get a refund from the tax office? Surely I’m not the only one?

So, not surprisingly lots of people are going to rush to the site and get money back from the government, wouldn’t you?

Clicking on the link takes you to this site [screenshot below]:

As you can see, the web site above asks for lots of personal data including, your social security number, your credit/debit card details, including the CVV [anti-fraud countermeasure] and your card’s PIN.

Guess what they will do with all that data?

• Make withdrawals from ATMs using the stolen card data via a ‘cloned’ card.
• Make online purchases.
• Make purchases over the telephone.
• And last but no least they could use this data to ’steal your identity’.

It could turn out to be a very expensive refund!

Oh, you do know that there is no refund, don’t you? This is just a scam.

However, there may be at least one silver lining to this cloud, if you gave them your credit card information then you might at least get the reward points or airmiles

The good news is that, although this site is still up and functioning as I write this, the Netcraft toolbar will warn you that this is a Phishing site. You do have the Necraft toolbar installed don’t you?

If you haven’t them why not, it’s FREE, does not contain any spyware or other malcode and most importantly it can stop you from making a very expensive mistake.

"Don’t browse the web without it."