Fraud Alert: Beware of the Phisherman!

No, I did not fail 3rd grade spelling!

Phishing is the term used to refer to computer fraudsters who strive to fool people like you and me into voluntarily handing over our personal financial information. Once they have their hands on our personal data, they will run up our credit card bills, empty our bank accounts, and destroy our credit ratings. I have personally been presented with "phishing lures" on 3 separate occasions, just in the last year. Fortunately, none were successful.

Before you say you would never fall for such trickery, be aware that phishing attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Most of the activity originates offshore. Early attempts were fairly obvious fraudulent, using crudely composed emails written in poor English. As the Phishermen have become more sophisticated, their attacks have become more convincing. A common approach is to use the name of an actual financial institution. The Phisher will broadcast an email to a wide audience using the name of the selected institution and telling readers that their account information needs to be updated. If an actual customer of that institution receives the email, they may easily be fooled into clicking on the provided link.

The link will usually take the unwitting victim to a bogus website on which they will be prompted to provide basic financial and personal information such as social security number, bank account numbers, etc. The phisher often goes through great pains to make the site appear genuine, even stealing logos from actual bank websites and incorporating them into the bogus page.

Even clicking on the link without providing the requested information gives the phisher useful information: they now know you are most likely a customer of that bank, and can use that information to target future fraud attempts.

As a rule of thumb, no bank or financial institution will EVER ask you to provide your bank and credit card account information over the web. Never respond to any email request for personal information. If you are unsure whether a request is genuine, call the institution and ask them.

Frontier Financial Planning, based in downtown Somerville in central New Jersey, provides comprehensive financial planning services for individuals and small business owners in Somerset, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Union, Morris, and Mercer counties. Our mission is to provide the very best client-centered advice while guiding our clients along the path to financial independence.

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