Yet another sophisticated banking ‘phishing’ scam is taking Australians hook, line and sinker. This one is especially clever, cloaked as an email from one of Australia’s ‘big four’ banks.
National Australia Bank (NAB) customers should be on the lookout for the scam, which disguises itself as an online banking form requesting additional information for ‘your NAB account’. The email in which the request is made, also threatens account suspension if action is not taken.
The email has been designed to snare personal financial information without the customer’s knowledge. It has been cleverly crafted to evade scam and virus filters, by replacing the letter ‘o’ with a circle in the word ‘verification’ – a flagged word usually picked up by such filters.
Anyone who opens the email is then encouraged to click a legitimate-looking link that leads them a fake NAB page requesting further information, including account, contact and credit card details.
Should they submit this information, they are then taken to the real NAB banking homepage without any idea that they’ve been scammed.
According to an NAB spokesperson: “NAB is aware of a current phishing email targeting customers requesting further information from customers to verify their account.
“NAB reminds customers that we will never ask them to verify your account details via a link in an email. We encourage our customers to be aware of suspicious emails and not to click links to suspicious websites.”
Kevin Epstein, Vice President of online security company Proofpoint’s Threat Operations Centre, expressed concern about the evolution of such phishing scams.
“Phishing attacks are getting smarter all the time – faster than legacy anti-spam and anti-phishing technologies can adapt. Even savvy users can be duped by campaigns like these, making more sophisticated anti-phishing solutions a necessity,” said Mr Epstein.
Australians are reminded to exercise caution when confronted by any suspicious looking emails and to report any such activity directly to Scamwatch.
Read more at www.news.com.au
Have you received this email? How did you respond to it?
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