Real Looking Fake Bills

Online Identity theft refers to online techniques that steal a victims personal information, be it there bank details, logon details or any other personal information, with the intent thereafter to either commit identity fraud (online or otherwise) or direct profit. (I.e. marketing those details).

There are many ways an identity thief can obtain these details, and it is the aim of this article to show you how they do it, so you can avoid falling victim to these scams in the future.

You don’t have to be technically savvy to understand this, but it helps if your familiar with computers and how to send and receive emails.

According to a Gartner Report, US banks and credit card issuers lost approximately $1.2 billion in 2003 alone as a result of online identity theft, so it is a serious issue. The monetary loss rises significantly when you also take into consideration the money spent recovering from such attacks. Also monetary loss isn’t the only detrimental effect identity theft can have when you take into consideration the human element such as depression and embarrassment that can result with this crime. This is not helped with other consequences such as wrongful criminal prosecutions and bad credit reports.

So how to identity thieves go about stealing your data?

There are many ways a thief can steal your data, and providing a full list of these techniques is not possible as the methods are so diverse, including hybrid techniques whereas the scammer may use more than one known system or multiple scams in order to complete their goal.

However, the most common methods are outlined below –

The most common method is using phishing attacks Real looking fake bills . (we have another article specific to this) Phishing is essentially when the scammer pretends to be somebody they are not in order to gain your trust and provide personal details. The scammers will often pretend to be from your bank, or from another reputable company you are a member of such as a social networking site, PayPal, eBay or your email provider. As is typical with phishing attacks they are nearly always initiated by the scammer through email. (though sometimes through instant messaging services)
The email may simply ask you to reply with personal information, or more commonly they will take you to a website that requires you to enter personal information. The website will usually look similar or even identical to the site of the company it is pretending to be (e.g. you banks website). This makes the scam look much more believable and has a much higher success rate.

Emails that take you to websites that duly steal personal information need to give you a reason to click the link they provide. Merely reading the information on the email can’t do any direct harm to the victim (this is not including email attachments.) It is a common fallacy that opening emails can harm your computer but this is not true. Opening email attachments CAN and DO harm computers, but the email itself it perfectly safe.

The emails need a response from the victim, so in order to get the victim to click the link provided, scammers will make up a reason to motivate the them to do this. Popular reasons include

• Verify personal details due to a software or security upgrade
• Claim the account has been compromised and they need the owner to verify their details
• Make false claims to motivate the victim to clearing up the “mistake” such as a fake bill.
• Limited offers to join various promotions and programs
• Fake claims of rewards

Rule of thumb: Don’t click on links on emails. If you believe the email is real, go direct to the source without using the link (i.e. banks website.)

For more information on email phishing you can click here.

Another popular method of stealing data is through installing malware onto a victim’s computer. Malware is essentially malicious software downloaded to the victim’s computer in order to cause some detrimental effect.

A common method to get malware onto the computer is to get the victim to execute an email attachment So Real looking fake bills . In some examples this can be essentially email phishing and an email malware scam rolled up into one. For example emails from your bank. The email won’t persuade the user to click a link but will encourage the user to open the email attachment. It does this in a variety of ways, depending on the nature of the phishing attack but for example an email claiming to be from your bank can say your statement is attached and needs to be viewed.

The email can purport the attachment is a receipt, or what is increasingly common is to tell the victim the attachment is juicy celebrity photos or gossip, which will always appeals to many. The attachment then installs malware on to the computer.

Emails can also (like phishing) link to websites, but instead of the website asking for personal details it can install malware onto your computer. Most of the time, providing you are using up-to-date- firewall protection the majority of this type of attack should