My fiancee forwarded an e-mail she received today from a bank that she does not use. The e-mail stated that the bank had locked her online access and needed some information from her.
Here is the gist of it:
"Dear customer,
Your access to Online Services has been suspended. Due to a miss-match access code between your Site key information. To enable you continue accessing your online account it will only take you few minutes to re-activate your account. Click on the link below and you will be taken straight to where you can activate your account."
It goes on to provide a link to the bank, which if investigated shows that it actually points to a link at MISIONCRISTIANAELIMHN.com. Performing a quick check at dnsstuff.com shows that it is registered to Solucion Logica in San Pedro Sula, Cortez, Honduras with Julius Barber as the technical contact. Continuing along this path, I visited Solucion Logica's website at www.slogica.net and found that they are currently having problems with their mail because one of their servers is being used for Spam.
Of course, they say that they are investigating who the culprit is and once that account has been discovered, it will be suspended. Also you are welcome to call 9982-8141 if you have any questions, but you better be fluent in Spanish.
I guess where I'm going with this is the fact that this should not be happening. Organizations which allow people to spam from their servers should be held liable for any damage that it does. And let's face it, this is not just spam but an attempt to illegally gain someone's banking information.
No less than an outright attempt to steal money from someone and it should not be tolerated.
I am a strong proponent of what the Electronic Frontiers Foundation represents and I believe an open Internet allows for the most advances. However, allowing people to attempt such flagrant scams should not be tolerated. And yes, there are other things that occur over the Internet that are even more disturbing but our law enforcement personnel are already pursuing those individuals.
I guess I find it hard to believe that in this day and age, someone can feel so brazen as to attempt something like a phishing scam and not be concerned about the repercussions.
Let us hope that someone will put into effect a mechanism to block those that attempt scams such as these.
Here's a thought: If a government body ran a DDOS, after judicial approval similar to a wiretap proceeding, against one of these creeps, it would force ISPs to be much more diligent about the junk they allow through their networks.
Of course, the ISP would need to be given prior knowledge and a chance to work the issue out themselves, but at least we would have some recourse.
Right now, we solely place the burden of protecting yourself on the end user which is sounds like money to a phisher.
What do you think?
Michael Mongold
Well, what can I say? It’s always end-user responsibility to keep his PC healthy. I've got one receipt from all that threats. Outpost Firewall Pro by Agnitum (www.agnitum.com) with anti-spyware and anti-spam plugins. After installing this software, I've got nothing like phishing letters posted above. It really keeps your private data.
Posted by: Dael | June 18, 2007 at 03:40 PM
Hi here I am that I found this post regarding me and my clients domain.
The Problem:
Some how the account was hacked and they installed a php file which ran from the browser and started sending emails, it was a hard day that one finding the account from all my clients I had, he was doing a good job spamming because was leaving no trace.
Solution:
We have fixed the problem and I have changed since today the information on the domain, since I did not have all the information I left mine there.
if anybody has any questions regarding this I answer all the emails and post to my contact form on my website or you can call me at the 1-800 number we have for free.
http://www.slogica.net/component/option,com_contact/Itemid,3/
Thanks and sorry for all the emails that received this junk I personally do not like receiving spam.
Posted by: Julius Barber | June 29, 2007 at 02:44 PM