Global Crime Ring
June 12, 2008 – 4:49 pmEarlier this month 38 individuals were charged with stealing credit card info, SSN, and other personal identifiable information from internet users. The Romanian based phishing ring sent out fraudulent emails. The emails appeared to be from legitimate banks directing people to fake websites that then requested users to input sensitive data into their online forms. The Romanian phishers took the data from thousands of credit accounts and sent it to the United States where it was encoded on magnetic cards. The cards were used to withdraw hundreds of thousands of dollars from the victims bank accounts.
Half of the people who were charged in this month’s recent case were Romanian. However, this particular scam was also known to operate out of Portugal, Pakistan, Canada, and the United States.
So how do phishers obtain your information? You type in your current user name and password for “verification” purposes. Once you input your information the phisher captures that data and then uses it against you. But this is not the only way phishers can attack. It is also very common for them to email attachments that install spyware on your computer when clicked. This spyware can also capture personal identifiable information and then the info is sent out to a third party via the internet.
Thousands of individuals credit and debit card accounts were compromised because they answered spam email. Unfortunately, this type of crime is becoming increasingly more popular around the globe.
