Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Birmingham Bank UK, Another Faux Site

I signed up for Websense Security Alerts. Here is one of particular interest involving a totally fake financial institution, Birmingham Bank UK.

"Websense® Security Labs(TM) has received several reports of a new phishing attack that does not target any particular financial or ecommerce brand. Users receive an email from the bank welcoming them as a customer, and claiming that they are the beneficiary to funds from the Alliance Security and Finance Company in Amsterdam. The email includes a URL to the bank and a username and password to log into their "account."

Upon accessing the bank website, an option is provided to log in to their account with this bank, using the login information provided in the email. When the user logs in, the account information is displayed, along with a balance of more than 9 (nine) million dollars.

The website then requests that the user transfer the funds to their own bank account and requests that details of that account be entered in order to perform the transfer.

The phishing site is hosted in the UK and was up at the time of this alert."

The use of fake websites is nothing new and I have discussed them extensively on this blog. They are used in charity, e-Bay and PayPal fraud activity and the purpose is normally to steal financial and or personal information to commit identity theft.

If you would like to view the full alert by Websense go to: New Fraudulent Bank / Technique.

Artists Against 419 (US) is a website dedicated to fighting fake bank websites with a humorous twist. If you would like to learn more about these sites, I highly recommend them.

You might even join the Artists in shutting down a few of these sites.

If you are interested in a search engine that helps protect you from fraud (faux) websites, here is a post with a great (free) resource, TrustWatch Search Engine .

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