Fraud: New attack on bank customers with a 4999 euro transfer

Hans Christian Dirscherl

Consumer advocates warn of new fraudulent emails. The phishing emails have the lurid subject line “System Alarm Code”. Below the logo of the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken is the warning in orange: “WARNING! Suspicious transfer canceled!” (The spelling mistake is original).

This is followed by the general salutation “Dear Sir or Madam” and the text of the email states that the security system intercepted a “very suspicious transfer” of 4999 euros. The money allegedly had been transferred from the email recipient’s account to a foreign one The bank allegedly suspected a hacker attack and canceled the transfer.

Refined:

The bank claims that the canceled transfer would not show up in the customer’s online account history. The fraudsters want to prevent the customer from becoming suspicious when he logs into his online banking and does not notice anything about the “suspicious transfer”.

Then the mail comes to the crucial point: the customer supposedly has to re-authenticate himself to ensure that his account has not been hijacked. To do this, the customer should click on the orange button labeled “To the homepage”. Of course, the link behind it does not lead to real online banking, but to a fake website where the customer’s access data is supposed to be stolen.

How to recognize this phishing mail

The mail, which is supposed to come from the Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken, bears the sender’s address

ichbincoooool2@t-online.de

. The text of the email is teeming with spelling mistakes. In addition, your bank would never send you an email with a link to log in. Instead, you should always log in using the link set as a favorite/bookmark in the browser.

There is no indication that this mail is only intended for customers of the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken. This phishing e-mail is likely to be the typical “cluster bomb principle”: the e-mail is sent to as many e-mail addresses as possible in the hope that there will be customers of the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken and of these in turn at least some will go to the fall for scam.

Tip:

So delete this mail without clicking on anything in it.