Local Businesses Not Immune To E-mail Scams
Last updated Wednesday, April 30, 2008 4:51 PM CDT in Business
By Tara Muck
TIMES RECORD
Take a survey and make $80? Not so fast.
That's what a circulated e-mail purportedly from First National Bank of Fort Smith promised last month if customers filled out a simple survey. Answering those questions would get them $80 sent to their account. All that was needed was the customer's account information.
The e-mail, though looking legitimate coming from a First National Bank of Fort Smith e-mail address, was just one of many "phishing" scams received by millions of people a day.
Sam T. Sicard, vice president of First National Bank in Fort Smith, said the bank was aware of the e-mail but that it was found to not have occurred due to a breach of security. The e-mails were sent randomly, ending up in some FNBFS customers' mailboxes.
Dr. Audri Lanford, who operates Internet ScamBusters, a non-profit scam information Web site for consumers, said scammers send out millions of e-mails randomly each day. With "phishing" scams, these predators try to deceive customers into thinking the e-mail is a legitimate process and ask for personal information.
"If you get an e-mail with some kind of promise that you can make a lot of money filling out surveys, the chance of it being a scam is almost 100 percent," Lanford said. "Scammers send out millions of e-mails saying (consumers) can make money by taking surveys on Web sites, then they wind up asking for banking information so they can pay you. But they will either simply steal money from your bank account or they may try to steal your identity as well."
According to the 2007 Internet Crime Report, the Internet Crime Complaint Center received 206,884 complaints of crimes over the Internet during 2007. Of the 90,000 complaints sent to law enforcement, 72,226 victims reported a total loss of $239.09 million - up 20 percent from the $198.44 million loss in 2006. In 2001, $17.8 million losses were reported.
Spam, which is an e-mail sent to thousands of recipients trying to "sell" a product, has been around much longer than the Internet, said Tom Kirkham, owner of Kirkham Systems in Fort Smith. May 3 is the 30th anniversary of the first spam e-mail.
Kirkham said before the World Wide Web was introduced, ARPANET (Internet's predecessor) was developed and used by the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1960s. And on May 3, 1978, an employee with the now-defunct Digital Equipment Corp., sent a commercial message e-mail to 393 users of ARPANET.
Today, there is an estimated 183 billion messages per day sent out over the Internet and roughly 70 percent to 72 percent of those were found to be spam, according to research conducted by the Radicati Group in October 2007.
But spam has become more than just a nuisance filling up inboxes. Through phishing, such as the bank survey, to viruses that infect computers, spam is costing businesses as well.
According to a Federal Trade Commission report in December, FTC panelists noted that 80 percent of 639 businesses surveyed experienced cybercrime-related losses totaling $130 million dollars last year.
And many of these spam e-mails don't come directly from the scammers themselves but through viruses sent out to thousands of computers. The infected computer will then send out e-mails, so it's hard to track down the initial sender. Kirkham said a Russian business network was found to pay $100 for people to send out one million spam e-mails.
"It's organized crime," Kirkham said. "It's a big business. They set up computers all around the world."
Lanford said that whether through random e-mailing, infiltrating e-mail lists through virus-laden computers or through purchasing e-mail lists, most spammers don't care if only 99 percent of them bounce back as undeliverable because sending e-mails is free.
For First National Bank, Sicard said they have various security controls and encryptions to help protect their customers.
"There are IT (information technology) audits we go through to ensure our customers' information is protected, and there are requirements (by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.)," Sicard said.
And as technology becomes ever-changing, banks have to step up their focus on IT. Sicard said IT expenditures has increased over time but wasn't sure on the percentage budgeted toward the department for those purposes.
While banks and institutions can't do much to stop phishing scams, Kirkham said the best line of defense for them is to educate their customers. It's also best to have a spam blocker or filter used on e-mail servers. However, many servers, such as Microsoft Outlook, come with it installed.
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