Saturday, October 14, 2006

Your Federal Reserve Bank account has been accessed! Again!

Phishing is an ever-growing problem. Even if you realize the website to which you are directed is not the one from your bank, you are still vulnerable to a number of things. Check out my previous post for the serious side of things.

For some of us, it is one of growing amusement as well. I have a list of email addresses from various companies I forward phishing email to. ("Your Citi account has been violated!" yeah right.) Since I never get just one, I put the report-phishing email addresses in my addressbook. I've got one for the head of security at a credit union. The second time I sent him something, he sent back a thank you, as he hadn't seen that one or the website they were operating from. The last time I sent him something, I said any time he wanted me to stop, just let me know. Haven't heard a thing. I hope some yah-hoo doesn't decide that I'm this great world traveler, based on the "accounts" I have all over. According to the email I get, I have accounts in Alaska, Alabama, Kansas, Indiana, Texas and Tennessee. Oh, and two different accounts in Hawaii.

Man, do I travel a lot, or what?

And with Citi, BofA, Chase, Amazon.com (my credit card with Amazon had been accessed - does Amazon have a credit card?), an assortment of credit unions, the National Credit Union Association (they don't have accounts - I'm waiting for the one about my account with the Federal Reserve Bank), Visa (visa doesn't have individual accounts either), and a host of others.

I choose to be amused. And fight back. To report phishing or spam, these email addresses are useful:

reportphishing@antiphishing.org

spam@uce.gov