Telephone Scam Alert
The FBI has sent out a warning to all Consumers, small- and medium-sized business about the latest telephone scam.
The latest ploy by the cyber criminals is to initiate a Denial of Service Attack (DoS) on the phone system making your phone(s) not available for incoming or outgoing calls. These Denial of Service attacks used to be primarily a way to target websites by flooding them with an overwhelming amount of traffic. They are moving to the telephone system now.
When this happens and you try to answer the phone, all you would hear is dead air or you could hear pre-recorded messages. The denial of service is not the primary goal. This is the distraction to the real crime. While the phone is tied up, the cyber criminal is trying to empty your bank account of all of your available funds by masquerading to be you.
How the scam works:
• Before the DoS attack, the criminal has made contact with the victim to gain access to personal information allowing them access to the financial records. This could have been done weeks before the DoS attack. This could have been an phishing email, accomplished by social engineering, or a keylogging program downloaded when a link was clicked on.
• After the information has been secured and the time is right (according to the criminal), the phone lines are tied up. Why is this important? The bank will be unable to confirm any transactions with you because the phone lines are tied up. Sometimes the criminal has even gone in and changed the profile of the victim to include their phone number to ensure success.
• If the transactions aren’t made, they simply call the bank and request the transaction go through. They have all of the information needed to verify the transaction.
What to do to prevent the scam:
• Never open email from strangers or click on any links in emails you did not initiate.
• Never give out personal or banking information to anyone with whom you did not initiate the call or email.
• Change your banking and automated telephone system passwords frequently.
• Reconcile your bank balances often – daily if you have daily transactions.
• Protect your computers with the latest anti-virus and anti-spam software and keep them up to date. Install all updates frequently.
If you think you have been a victim of the scam, call your financial institution and file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center: http://www.spiritbank.com/leavepage.html?url=http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx .
We at SpiritBank want to keep you informed about anything affecting the security of your private personal information or your finances.