LawEddie.com

 As mentioned in my previous post, you are urged to be careful with your identity which are stored or which appears in the cyber world due to the recent rampant phishing activities in Malaysia cyberspace.

Based on Shamsul Jafni Salleh, former Director of Security, Trust and Governance Department of Malaysian Communication And Multimedia Commission (MCMC), that MCMC received 40-50 emails of phishing attempts on local bank in Malaysia every day.

So what is phishing?

Based on Wikipedia definition: 

“phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular web sites…”

In simple words, phishing is like “fishing”, you are lured to disclose confidential information to someone who pretends to be from the realiable source. These include someone pretends from the local banks, paypal, ebay, amazon, aol… Amongst others, the international bank – Citibank is the top phishing target and Brazil is the country where most phishing emails being sent out from based on the statistic.  

Recently, I been receiving numerous emails from local banks, including Maybank and CIMB.  

 Example of phishing email from “Maybank”:

“Dear Valued Customers,We hereby alert all our valued customers of the new online security (M2U-LMT?) risk which is programmed to attack account holders, hack and collate vital account and secured information.We have today activated our online account security protection “service” which will protect customers from such attacks. It is mandatory that all Maybank customers secure their online account using the below secured location.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Log in to CIMBClicks online account (click here).

2. You must request for TAC online via CIMBClicks – your TAC will be sent via SMS to the mobile phone number you registered at the ATM.
( you can find the “request TAC” button in the left menu of your account )

3. Logout from your account and close the browser.

4. When you have received the TAC (Transaction Authorization Code) on your mobile phone, Log in to our secured verification server and submit the requested information(Account user ID, password and TAC).CLICK HERE to go on our secured server.

5. Please allow 48 hours for processing.
Please comply and thanks for understanding.
© 2008 CIMB Bank”

Why I am so sure that these are phishing emails? because I never own any accounts with these banks.

Please be reminded that the bank will never ask you to verify important information via email.