Newest 'Phishing' scam targets Earthlink

[LadyFish]

Phishing attacks involve the mass distribution of 'spoofed' e-mail messages with return addresses, links, and branding which appear to come from banks, insurance agencies, retailers or credit card companies. These fraudulent messages are designed to fool the recipients into divulging personal authentication data such as account usernames and passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. Because these emails look “official”, up to 20% of recipients may respond to them, resulting in financial losses, identity theft, and other fraudulent activity....

Source<br /><br />Anybody can be the target of these attacks, but Earthlink customers are the latest victims:<br /><br />Quote:<br />Earthlink "Problems With Your Earthlink Account"<br /><br />Summary<br />Email title: "Problems with your Earthlink account."<br />Scam target: Earthlink members<br />Email format: HTML email<br />Sender: Various.......<br />Sender spoofed? Yes<br />Scam call to action: "We regret to inform you that we were unable to charge your card...We need you to re-enter valid payment and verification information."...........<br /><br />Be warned.<br /><br />And by the way, there is no patch for this vulnerability, but Microsoft offers some tips on how to protect yourself against 'spoofed' links.<br /><br />They use HTML because it allow deceptive links to their bogus site. In Outlook Express, hovering the mouse pointer over a link shows the target address at the bottom of the OE window. It should agree with the alleged URL in the link. If it doesn't, it's BS.<br /><br />Also look for "https" (the "s" is for "secure") at the start of the URL. Legitimate business log-in pages are always encrypted.<br /><br />For the geeks-at-heart, in Outlook Express (other email clients should have the same capability), right-click on the email to bring up a menu.<br /><br />Click Properties > Details > Message Source<br /><br />This allows viewing the raw, unformatted message text exactly as it was received. The header information that one never normally sees will be at the top in bold characters. It contains a wealth of information that can often (but not always) be used to tract fraudulent emails, spam sources, etc..<br /><br />Here's an informative page on reading header info, etc. It's written for LE personnel, but applies to every computer user.<br /> Basic Email Header Reading <br /><br />Below the header info will be the message contents in regular type. It will be easy to find URLs in the message text and compare them to legitmate ones.<br /><br />Note: Large blocks of what look like random characters represent graphics and/or attachments.

 

[mellowyellow]

Re: Newest 'Phishing' scam targets Earthlink

thanks ladyphish

 

[LadyFish]

Re: Newest 'Phishing' scam targets Earthlink

ROTFL MY. Maybe I should have posted this in the "phishing forum".

 

[bubbakat]

Re: Newest 'Phishing' scam targets Earthlink

you are right on lady fish I received one of these and forwarded it on to earth link

 

[rolmops]

Re: Newest 'Phishing' scam targets Earthlink

I've been getting them under the e-bay header.