This is my PSA (Public Service Announcement) for the week and it is about something pretty scary…Phishing Scams. Several years ago, I was a victim of identity theft. It was not a pleasant experience but it left me wiser and more cautious. It was done the old fashioned way of swiping some receipts and looking up some account information (local retailer). Now adays, identity theives have become much better in their “art.” I have first hand experience now…but I wasn’t a victim.

So, here is what happened, I received the following email:

It looked much more legit than others that I have seen. There were no huge gramatical errors or spelling errors (although the writing was pretty bad). So, I figured that I would check to see if Bank of American had shut down the site yet. To my suprise, they hadn’t! Thus, it became my mission to document this as a warning for others.

So, using Safari (because I have no faith in using Internet Explorer for things like this because of ActiveX installers and such), I went to the site and documented it. It looks identical to the current Bank of America site, and all of the links (with the exception of the login section in the upper left) were valid. Here is what it looked like:

Take a look at the url and the domain [http://debitcc.bankofamerica.uo-s.com/secure/ ]. Doing a WHOIS on that domain gets me this:

Registrant:
Marcis Graudins
Rigas iela 9-19
Ligatne, Cesu raj LV-4108
Latvia

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: UO-S.COM
Created on: 22-May-06
Expires on: 22-May-07
Last Updated on: 16-Jun-06

Administrative Contact:
Graudins, Marcis marcis.graudins@gmail.com
Skolas iela 9-19
Ligatne, Cesu raj LV-4108
Latvia
37126261435

Technical Contact:
Graudins, Marcis marcis.graudins@gmail.com
Skolas iela 9-19
Ligatne, Cesu raj LV-4108
Latvia
37126261435

Domain servers in listed order:
DNS2.CHARGERTEK.COM
DNS3.CHARGERTEK.COM

Hmmm. I don’t think that Bank of America is located in LATVIA! So, I went on to put in some fake information in the login screen and got to the screen that captures ALL the critical “identity theft” information. Take a look at this screenshot (click to view):

Clicking submit sends all of your confidential information off to the scammer! See success screenshot below:

So, I just figured that I would post this so that you know to be sure to never click through links sent in emails but rather go directly through your web browser. Be careful!!! I have reported this to Bank of America…so the site will hopefully be taken down soon.

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