Strider24

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.

I have had 2 Public Bank and one Maybank phishing emails in the last 2 days. Please be aware these criminals are at it again. Seems to be cyclical.

stranded traveller

Everything could be possible nowdays..everywhere in the world, we have to be extra conscious..whatever we do!

Kelabit

This is really becoming prevalent. I've had so many of these from Maybank, Public Bank, CIMB and others since the start of the year.
I'm now more careful to whom I give an email address to when completing forms, etc but phishing really is something to be alert to.

Atilla

Some of the more organised 'scammers' are very sophisticated in how they operate, often using highly paid 'crackers' (criminal hackers) to write their code. Those who are particularly good at will use code that triggers the mail using a variety of templates (some MUCH better than others) according to the country the intended recipient lives in (for which again they use a variety of techniques to establish through ISP domain names etc etc). So if you are in Malaysia they will purport to come through local banks there, if in the UK, UK banks etc etc. In some cases these are world-wide criminal enterprises that will target multiple countries in cycle. In other cases thay are low level individual or group based operations, generally local, and whose mails tend to suffer from such gaffs as 'URJENT: This is a sekurity message from Paye-Pal - Please verify ur account details to avoid suspension" making them easy to identify.

Mail addresses most readily get 'compromised' (picked up by spam bots that 'Phishers' will design with slightly different attributes than those used by those in marketing) as soon as you start to register on sites, subscribe to newsletters or anything that asks for your mail address or even mail people with less sophisticated approaches to security who have compromised applications/software on their machnines (e.g. hit by Trojan, Malware or Virus).

For banking I have just ONE email address that I only EVER give to the one or two banks that I am with, it is given to no-one and used for nothing else ever. Because that address never gets used elsewhere it doesn't get compromised either criminally or by marketers (so no spam at all). On that basis any mail that I receive to any of my others accounts is either fraud or spam and just gets deleted and mostly picked up by spam filters. The single 'banking specific' email address (using the 'cell' principle) is a very good security counter-measure that many in that, and related industries, use. Good practice IMO.

Kelabit

Atilla,
Great post and I thank you for it.
I guess many readers will have benefitted from it. I'll certainly follow your way of countering it.
Best regards.

Atilla

You are most welcome

optimistic_jim

Excellent advice Atilla, something I will now do, especially in prep for my move to KL.

Most appreciated, thank you!

Atilla

I actually extend the principle to the mail address I use for friends/family (and NEVER use that for shopping/registering on sites etc), then I use a forum based one and then other disposables for shopping and all the other stuff that attracts the spam bots. Once it gets too 'busy' with junk I delete it and create another account. That way I find that my important mail addresses (friends, family and banking) stay 'clean'. Esp the latter. The friends family one is 99% OK too, it's just if one of those people has been hit by some form of grief that the rubbish arrives).

ex reg

Just testing as it's an unusually long time between posts.
bb must be on holiday.

bakedbean

Haha sort of. Just up in Phuket checking out our expensive "holiday home" (sic). Shall be back to civilization soon