Looking for Patten Makers Photography? Just click the name and you will be transported accross!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Another ASB phishing scam

Lately my inbox has been hit by a lot of phishing scams pretending to be from ASB. Here's the latest scam that avoided my spam filter. At the bottom of the post are reasons to believe it is a scam.

update@asbbank.co.nz me@localhost.com



Due to incorrect information provided during your signup process, your account has been deactivated from using our online services. Therefore, we invite you to update your profile in order to regain full access to our services. Our enhanced security procedures will help protect your personal information.
To update your profile, please follow the reference below:

ASB FastNet Login >>

If your account information is not updated within the next 24 hours, your account will be permanently deleted and you will no longer be able to use our online services.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Sincerely,
ASB Bank Customer Care



Reasons to believe it is a scam:
1) The last time I signed up with any bank was over 2 years ago. If they've gone 2 years without contacting me there are bigger issues with their service than them having a minor glitch during the sign-up process
2) ASB shouldn't have my e-mail address anyway
3) The link in the e-mail goes to a non-ASB page (judging by the address, I haven't clicked the link and neither should you)
4) They haven't used my name or any identifying information
5) The e-mail is sent to undisclosed recipients meaning the same message has been sent to a lot of people
6) There are no contact details provided in the message
7) There aren't even any ASB logos in the message (making this a crap phishing attempt)
8) There are 2 from addresses - 1 is from asbbank, the other is from localhost. Neither of these are from the actual asb domain asb.co.nz
9) Your bank will NEVER ask you to do something like this.


Interestingly new sign-ups are reasonably common around this time of year, particularly with University students being offered all kinds of incentives to sign-up to a particular bank. This scam may be looking to target this sign-up period. However if this is the case they're actually about 4 weeks early as the Unviersity Semester starts in late February and the banks are yet to launch their normal sign-up campaigns.

1 comment: