I just recieved one from my bank card company that I know is fake. Do I report it to Yahoo where my mail comes in? Do I go to citibank? They are asking for pin numbers and all that good stuff.

Thanks
Dana

By Kate on Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - 09:57 am:

I'd go to the Citibank website. They should have an area somewhere where you can report it and forward the email to them.

By John on Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - 10:06 am:

I wouldn't waste my time...
I'm not trying to sound glib, I'm basing this on my experience defending this website daily against hackers and these sorts of malcontents.

Most of these emails orignate from countries like China and Russia that have very weak computer crime laws. In most cases, MILLIONS of emails are relayed from computers in the USA (like yours and mine)that haven't been kept up to date with Microsoft patches, virus scanners and a firewall.

These computers have been hacked by people from these countries and used to send the emails.
They expect that for the millions of emails sent they will find a few naive individuals who comply.

However, due to their spoofing of the mail headers it is virtually impossible to track the original email source.

The website URLs they point to are also hacked systems that can pop up and go down like mushrooms after a spring rain.

The best thing is to make sure your own system is secure by having a firewall, virus scanner and staying up to date on Microsoft patches so your own system doesn't become part of this mess.

By Renee on Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - 10:59 am:

I too have received at least 5 emails from Citibank asking for my pin, acct number and mother's maiden name..everything. The only problem is that I do not have a Citibank acct. I've been deleting them.

Its awful that this is becoming a common thing and there are to many people out there that WILL supply them with the needed info.

By Joshuasmom on Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - 01:58 pm:

I reccommend you download zone alarm which may help preventing this in the future

By Ginny~moderator on Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - 06:13 pm:

If you want to, you can go to Citibank and wend your way through the site and report it. I did that a month or two ago, and it was not an easy thing to do. And there was no reply.

The only way to avoid getting caught in this scan is to not reply to the email and delete,delete,delete. Plus, of course, a firewall to make sure that just highlighting the email doesn't let it put something on your system, and a good virus scan and Spy Sweeper or Spybot or AdAware.

I also set my cookies so that the automatic cookie handling is over-ridden and I am asked each time a site or email wants to put a cookie on my computer whether I want to allow or disallow this time or permanently. I have found that just highlighting some spam to delete it brings up the window telling me that the site that sent the email wants to put a cookie on my computer. If I didn't have my cookies set for prompt each time, I'd probably have lots of spyware from such emails.

By Mommyathome on Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - 08:21 pm:

I once started reporting fraudulent e-mails from "ebay" and "paypal". But, it didn't really curve the problem at all. It was kind of a waste of time. There are so many out there. Now I just delete them and move on.