Online Phishing Scam – Lesson learned by our FBI Director

At home, I have a small corner of our basement dedicated as my “man cave“. In this particular man-cave, I have my notebook computer with dual screens, a small LCD TV, a mini-music studio (I’m into guitar and trumpet), and my XM-Radio boom box.  It’s my favorite place in the house (of course, my son is often playing with his Lego’s only about 10 feet away… but hey, I didn’t say it was a “private man-cave”.

ANYWAY, sitting in my man-cave last night, I was flipping through some  XM Channels I enjoy and ran across a VERY interesting Commonwealth Club of California presentation being given by Robert S. Mueller, the current FBI Director. It caught my attention because the topic was “Cyber-Crime”.

[You can see a transcript of the entire presentation here]

As we all know from watching the news, just as the Internet has become a big part of our lives, so has the pevalence of scammers using the Internet to invade our privacy and rip us off. Scams are nothing new…  certain shady individuals have been attempting to scam other individuals since the beginning of time. Now it’s just easier to do since the Internet gives us unprecedented ways to communicate with others at almost no cost.

This has not gone unnoticed by the government. According to an Infoworld report, early this week, the FBI indicted 53 individuals in the US as part of a bust called Operation Phish Phry. The 53 were indicted on various charges related to phishing schemes that affected thousands of customers of two major banks. [Click here to see an Infoworld article on the arrests]. The same article states that in June of this year, the number of unique phising Websites was 49,084, the highest since the record 55,643 were detected in April of 2007.

What this all means is that those of us who use the Internet on a regular basis need to be aware of the methods that scammers use to try and get to us. And once we are aware those ways, we need to be vigilante in protecting ourselves.

But I digress…

Mr. Mueller’s speech on cybercrime was very interesting for a couple of reasons. First, he reviewed various examples of how the FBI is dealing with cybercrime, and provided some insights that the public doesn’t often hear about. But what I found to be the most interesting was his revelation that he, himself, was almost tricked into giving out his bank information to a scam artist, via a “phising” email (an email that looks like it’s from your bank or other instituction, asking you to click an link and update your information… but in reality it’s a criminal wanting your bank information).

So let me get this straight… the head of the FBI almost fell for the common phishing email scam? Ok, I’m not putting down Mr. Mueller in any way, I’m just thinking to myself that if HE can get tricked, ANYONE can.

At the Senior Health Foundation, I deal with questions about online scams, phishing emails, virus, spyware…. all the typical Internet nasties, on a daily basis. So often, in fact, that our class that deals with the subject…. Internet Security, is now part of our regular Internet class series and is one I recommend to ALL of our computer students.

[BTW, our next Internet Securiy class coming up on Tuesday, November 10th at 1PM - email me at jlortz@shf.org if you want to sign up].

But here are the main points about protecting yourself that you need to remember:

• Never open an attachment or click a link in an email message from someone you don’t know. In fact, it’s just best to delete them without even opening them.
• If you get an email that seems to be from your bank or some other financial institution you work with, be VERY SUSPICIOUS. If the message asks you to click a link, it’s bogus. Most banks will NEVER ask you to do this. Instead, if you still think it’s from your bank, CALL them and check or go directly to the Web site by typing the address in yourself.
• Always monitor your bank and financial statements for transactions that don’t look familar.
• Make sure you have a good Anti-virus and Anti-spyware program installed, and that it’s being updated on a daily basis.
• Make sure you let Microsoft do the regular Windows Updates. These updates are normally for security purposes.

NOTE: Speaking of Windows Updates, this week Microsoft announced that next Tuesday it will deliver the largest-ever number of security updates (13) to fix problems in every version of Windows, Internet Explorer, and Office. Although most of you probably have Automatic Updates turned on, you’ll still want to make sure that this update gets done.

• When you purchase items online, make sure you are on a “secure page” when you enter your personal/account information. You can tell by looking for “https://” in the address and by looking for a padlock on the status bar of the browser window.
• When you make a purchase online, know your vendor.

After hearing the speech, and finding the transcript, I did a Google search and found some interesting commentaries on the presentation. Here’s one that I particularly liked from the Washington Post.

Tagged as: antivirus, cybercrime, hoax, Internet, malware, scam, scammer, spyware, updates