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Internet criminals are more likely to hijack the brand of Natwest in an attempt to defraud computer users than any other company offering personal financial services. Anti-spam experts at ClearMyMail said the British bank accounted for almost half of all the spam and fraudulent phishing emails sent to its customers last month. Although each attack was filtered, every single one of the firm’s customers was targeted by an average of 18 fake phishing emails headed with the Natwest name. In the firm’s league table, of the top 10 most phished and spammed brands in personal financial services, Citibank came second, and amassed almost 30% of the attacks. Every customer was sent an average of five bogus mails from HSBC, making it the third most phished brand, in front of Abbey, in fourth and Lloyds TSB, in fifth. Global payment giant PayPal was only the sixth most targeted brand, proving more appealing to fraudsters than the Royal Bank of Scotland, in seventh, and Nationwide, in eighth. Another British building society - the Halifax - emerged as target number nine for committing fraud via spam or phishing emails, and is marginally more hijacked than Europe’s MBNA. “It has almost got to the stage where cyber-crooks are building up a portfolio of email databases containing contact information that is profiled to fit a certain bank or building societies typical customer in order to improve the success rate of their fraudulent attacks,” said Dan Field, managing director of ClearMyMail. He added that without any email protection, online banking customers in the UK are at “severe risk” of being tricked into giving away their account details. The emails being used, he said, are very well-constructed to look exactly like a legitimate message from the bank. Jan 23, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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