So I recently got an email from Bank of America, my bank... I open the email and it says,
"Your Bank Of America account is Blocked !"
and also says,
"Dear Bank of America customer, we recently reviewed your account, and suspect that your Bank of America
account may have been accessed by an unauthorized third party.
Protecting the security of your account is our primary concern.
Therefore, as a preventative measure, we have temporarily limited access
to sensitive account features."
And tells me to click on a link below to reset my password. As I'm reading this email I currently had my bank acct open online so I'm thinking to myself, "Hmmm that seems odd doesn't seem blocked to me...but oh well..."
But then I think for a second, and read the rest of the email and notice something very odd...
"Tank you for your patience as we work together to protect your account."
I think to myself, "B of A is a pretty big company... and I'm pretty sure they would not send out a letter to its customers saying "Tank you..."
So the "Tank" gave it up for me. But I clicked on the link anyway to see what it looked like, i had closed my bank acct window btw.
The link takes me to http://banofamerica.com and references a pay pal acct in the http. And the questions are pretty scary, "Insert online id, insert password, DOB, SSN...etc" everything down to my blood type for the love"
I've gotten a few of these before, sometimes from "Paypal" saying my acct is out of wack...which is odd since I DON"T HAVE A PAY PAL ACCT. So i generally ignore those.
I also find it odd the way I detected the scam was via a misspelling... i guess I see others faults before my own.
Posted by holtonian at August 21, 2007 10:41 PM | TrackBackI've gotten in the habit of just going to these sites myself instead of following the links.
Posted by: davidm. at August 22, 2007 08:29 AMRemember the days when people would go around stealing checks out of people's mailboxes? Now the thieves can hit thousands of people per day with just a click of the mouse!
I recently received the same email that you received. The first thing that I saw as fishy was, "Dear Bank of America Customer". If the bank is contacting you, you can bet that they know your name, but that still shouldn't make you feel secure. I clicked on the link out of curiosity and Norton picked it up as a potential threat and redirected me to a blank page instead.
If there is a problem with my account, I call the bank directly.
Posted by: Desrah at September 9, 2007 11:26 PM