Sunday, April 27, 2008

Polly Scams Hoaxers

Dear All!

Yet again it ismy sad responsibility to report that the scammer's are at it again. This time it's in the form of an innocent e-mail sent to my VINCA Cards e-mail address (vincacards at yahoo.co.uk - change at to @ to use this address) ...

Should you be unfortunate enough to receive something similar you may be tempted to explore; as I was. If you do, please be aware that I have Norton Internet Security which thankfully protected me from this obvious attempt at phishing and don't be tempted to enter any personal information.



If you are a valued customer of any banking institution and you receive a similar letter or e-mail, call into your local branch and tell them about your e-mail. Should there any confusion they will clear it up relatively quickly, but the one thing that they will never do is ask you to divulge details on line or over the phone.

Anyway, have a quick look below and see what you think. You might want to follow the link yourself; just to see what I'm on about, unfortunately you can't the link as it isn't live - I disabled it; just in case...

LOGO






Dear Valued Customer,

During our regular update and verification of the?????? Internet
Banking Service, we could not verify your current information. Either
your information has been changed or incomplete, as a result your
access to use our services has been limited.

To restore your online
banking access, kindly update your information. You can update your
online banking details by following the link below.

Click here to update your account

Thank you for banking with ??????
Customer Service


To be honest, the copy writing of this letter is poor, plus I don't have an account with the bank concerned. (I have removed any references/logo's to avoid infringing any copyright laws which may be applicable)

Out of interest I did click on the link and was transported to this sign in page, which looks pretty good. It even has a thing on how to protect yourself from Internet crime!

Just as I read this, Norton kicked in and saved the day; see below...


Please do not hesitate to act; in an effort to stamp this type of crime out. If you are 'the winner of a prize' one of the first things they usually do is ask you not to publicize your good fortune.

Do just the
opposite and SHOUT it from the roof tops:

  1. Tell everyone you know about it
  2. Blog about it!
  3. Report it to the relevant authorities.
  4. Write to your local newspaper.
  5. Do not keep it to yourself! You might just save someone less fortunate than yourselves from being had...
That's all from me tonight, so it's over and out from

Polly Peirce
your local cyber-vigilante and
Purveyor of fine Hand-made Irish Greeting Cards & Wedding Stationary

ps The screen shots are courtesy of TechSmith's Camtasia Studio 3




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

They are a menace. They even rang my credit card company security for information and were only stopped because they didn't know the answer to the security question. I was then alerted. Heaven knows how they got hold of my name and the number of the security - I dread to think about that one!
GOod for you shouting from the roof tops.

Polly Pierce said...

When will it ever stop!

Thank God for the security people at your credit card company; it really doesn't bear thinking of does it?