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Wachovia warns customers on 'phishing'

Wachovia warns customers on 'phishing' - Yahoo! News

Fri Jun 3, 4:19 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wachovia Corp. (NYSE:WB - news), the No. 4 U.S. bank, on Friday warned customers about an increasingly common e-mail scam designed to steal personal information and money, ahead of a systems conversion next weekend affecting former SouthTrust Corp. customers.

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia and SouthTrust, which it bought last November 1, are among many banks whose customers have fallen victims to "phishing" scams.

Phishing lures innocent people to bogus Web sites that look like those of well-known or reputable government agencies, banks, credit card companies and retailers, and deceives them into divulging personal data. The term is derived from the act of computer thieves who "fish" for private data.

"Since the beginning of the year, we have seen a rise in the number of phishing e-mails with the SouthTrust name," Wachovia spokesman Doug Caldwell said. "With our upcoming systems conversion, fraudsters are trying to take advantage of perceived vulnerabilities of customers, knowing that customers will have to change some of their log-in procedures."

Caldwell said Wachovia does not know how many of its customers have been phishing victims.

Wachovia said it has already notified all customers who need to update account information, and does not sent unsecured e-mails asking them to provide personal information online.

It said customers should report fraudulent e-mails to abuse@wachovia.com or abuse@southtrust.com.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group, which monitors Internet scams, has said up to 5 percent of recipients of scam e-mails respond, often suffering identity theft or financial loss.

The group identified 3,930 distinct phishing attacks in April, twice as many as in the prior July. It reported an attack affecting SouthTrust as recently as May 9.

SouthTrust had been based in Birmingham, Alabama.

June 4, 2005 at 02:18 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (33) | Top of page | Blog Home