Polly Beats Scammers At Their Own Game...

Yet again it appears that the scammers are back in action.This is a copy of a message that I received on my Facebook account from a worried friend...

Urgent !!!!IF YOU ARE WITH BANK OF IRELAND AND GET AN EMAIL FROM THIS EMAIL ADDRESS bankofireland@bankofireland.credit.co.ie; DO NOT CLINK ON THE LINK AS IT IS A SCAM. I HAVE CONFIRMED THIS WITH THE BANK. PLEASE PASS THIS ON URGENTLY

Also I received a message from the Gmail team - one of many - warning about suspicsious attachments in messages from, you guessed it, UPS. Yep, that old chestnut is still doing the rounds. Regular readers may remember my Mum's traumatic experience last month, when she opened an attachment supposedly from UPS and released a particularly nasty Trojan horse.

Although the message had been intercepted by her Norton anti-spam programme she had been expecting a parcel from a company who used UPS from time to time and was sure that the message was the genuine article. Needless to say that one slip cost a lot in terms of money and anxiety!

It also seems that Amazon has been targetted by the blighters, so be careful if you've ordered anything from the company and then receive one of their messages. You'd be better advised to log into your account and look for messages there than to take the risk...

Be vigilant and maybe even consider doing what I've done, which is to forward all my e-mail accounts to Gmail. Their anti-spam interception programme is highly recommended by IT professionals and in my experience it certainly seems to be coming up trumps. The level of junk mail in my in-box has been reduced to a minimum of approximately six per day, as opposed to an excess of forty!

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