Cyberscams on Rise With Economic Crisis
Posted on: Thursday, 9 October 2008, 12:00 CDT
Fear surrounding the growing economic calamity is feeding online criminals' efforts to steal consumers' personal information, computer-security experts say.
The number of fake Web sites, spam e-mail and phishing attacks has mushroomed as cybercrooks seek to take advantage of the sudden widespread alarm, the experts say.
Most scams center on spam and phishing against the backdrop of bank failures, mergers and takeovers, the experts tell USA Today.
Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
Current and former customers of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Washington Mutual Inc. are being inundated with phishing attempts as Washington Mutual becomes part of Chase, USA Today says.
One example is an e-mail message that wrongly appears to come from Chase. It asks customers to go to a purported Chase Web site and provide personal information such as user ID, password, name, address, phone number and Chase credit card number.
Citigroup Inc. and Wachovia Corp. customers are also targets, fraud intervention expert Ori Eisen of 41st Parameter tells USA Today.
Source: United Press International
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