A Phishing Bank Account Disaster Avoided

Recently, we had a customer that was notified by their bank, that their on-line access to their account had been suspended.  The reason was, that someone had tried to wire a very large sum of money out of that account.

They had been the victim of a phishing scam, or had a key logger on their computer.  One way or the other, someone overseas had got ahold of their login credentials, and tried to drain their account.  The system that they used to access that account was checked, and no key logger was found.  Still, to be safe, that system was wiped, and reloaded from scratch.  Fortunately, the bank had stopped the transaction in time.

Phishing is an attempt to get your login credentials via a fake email or website, is very common.  Key loggers track the keys you hit when you are on-line, such as typing your username and password, and send them to a hackers master site.  Both are serious malware intrusions to guard against.

There are several things that can be done to help avoid these.  If at all possible, have a dedicated computer for your financial transactions.  Do not do anything on the internet from this computer, other than your financial transactions.  Do not use it for email, or anything else.

As always, be very suspicious of any email that claims to be from your financial institution.  Especially if it says that you need to confirm your identity, or leads you in any way to log into your account.  Never click on any links in these emails.  Instead, go directly to your financial institution website by typing the URL into your web browser.  Or, call the customer service department, to find out if the email is actually from them.

In the current environment, it is best to assume that any email you receive, relating in any way to personal, or financial, information is fake.  

Make sure ALL of your servers, desktops, and mobile devices are protected by a good online malware software like AVG, MalwareBytes, SuperAntiSpyware or other top tier products.  

CCS Retail maintains pages for Malware Protection Resources and a Malware Alert Blog.   Visit and subscribe to these resources to help you avoid potential disasters like phishing scams.