Of phishing emails and sms smishing

The Cape Argus (8th October 2009) and The Star (22th October 2009) newspapers carried stories about bank electronic fraud that is becoming increasingly worrisome to South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric). Fraudsters send either email messages or smses to randomly targeted bankers requiring personal information so that they may gain access to the bank accounts and "steal" their money. What caught my attention was the advice Sabric gave such as urging customers to ignore emails of those nature even though they read exactly like those coming from genuine banks. Another piece of advice from Sabric is never to respond to any sms requiring personal details. Rather call your bank.

What's intriguing about the pieces of advice is that, more often than not, when any customer get such correspondences the first thing on mind is 'let me act quickly before anything happens'. That will be panickingly responding to the email or sms only to regret it later when you go to your bank only to discover that you have been cleaned out! My word of caution therefore is let's think carefully before we act.