Fraudulent, Phishing E-mails Masquerade as ASB Bank

E-mails posing as messages from New Zealand-based ASB Bank Limited have been seen presently circulating online, published softpedia.com dated December 18, 2012.

Displaying a caption "Your End of the Year Account Status," the fake notifications supposedly from ASB are the creations of cyber-criminals that entice clients for accessing one bogus login page of ASB Bank, which actually garner the users' Internet-banking credentials.

Announcing "Account Notification," the spurious e-mails tell the recipient that there's need for updating his 'End-Of-The-Year' report. Therefore, he's urged to click on a given ASB web-link for making his account up-to-date otherwise he may go to his nearest ATM, state the e-mails. Millersmiles.co.uk reported this.

But, recipients who follow the web-links inside the messages get led onto a page, which's a duplicate of the FastNet designed to provide the login page from ASB to accountholders.

Notably, web-browsers flag the phishing web-page as a malevolent one; however, the fraudsters are chanced with relocating it onto some other site so the operation continues.

Remarking about the ongoing e-mail fraud, ASB Bank stated that customers were being reiterated that no firm within the ASB Batch of companies such as BankDirect, ASB Securities, ASB, or any other would ever solicit their protected banking details like credit card or account particulars, PIN, password alternatively NetCode details over e-mail. The entities wouldn't also ask customers to login for accessing their accounts through any e-mail link, as ASB would ask to do so only via its website that they must obtain through entering www.asb.co.nz straight inside the address bar of their browsers.

Worryingly, it's because of the above kinds of phishing e-mail scams which are resulting in an increase in phishing online, remark security analysts. According to them, phishing is still an extremely frequent and effective form of online-criminal operation, which ensnares more-and-more new victims worldwide, daily.

Eventually, it isn't just ASB as a bank that cyber-criminals have targeted during the past months. For, during November 2012, 2nd-week, e-mails were spotted that posed as communications from 'Suncorp,' the financial institution based in Australia, advising recipients towards following one web-link for reading a yet-to-be-opened message lying inside their Internet-banking A/Cs.

Related article: Fraudulent Warning to Customers of Halifax

» SPAMfighter News - 12/25/2012