'Phishing' warning issued

Before you go anyplace else on your computer, be aware, you are at risk for â€˜phishing.â€™ <br><br>It's where con-artists use web sites that look like legitimate businesses to â€˜phishâ€™ for your

Thursday, April 8th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Before you go anyplace else on your computer, be aware, you are at risk for â€˜phishing.â€™

It's where con-artists use web sites that look like legitimate businesses to â€˜phishâ€™ for your personal information, then turn around and use it for things like identity theft.

As News on 6 crime reporter Lori Fullbright explains, it even happened to a woman who works at the Tulsa Police Department and it could happen to you.

Rita Knowles works in the police department's payroll department. She recently got an email from Citibank that requested some private banking information. "It said they had a problem with their cards and they wanted my account number of my card and my PIN number that you'd use in an ATM, so I figured something wrong was going on."

Rita was right and she's not alone. The FBI says 282 new â€˜phishingâ€™ scams were created in just February alone. Most of them are from Europe and Asia. They even provide links to the businesses in the emails and if you click on them, the sites look just like the real pages, but they aren't, they're fakes.

Sometimes they claim your account is going to be shut down if you don't provide your personal information, other times, they offer you a prize for the information.

If you get an email like that, first do three things. Stop; don't respond right away, no matter how urgent it sounds. Look at the information, banks with your account information don't need your information again. And then, call the business on the phone and ask if the email is legit.

If you do respond to the email, the scammers use the information in three ways. Go shopping on your current account, to create new accounts or send you viruses.

Rita was smart and didn't respond. "Even if I didn't work here, I wouldn't give out that information easily." Plus, Rita didn't even have a Citibank card.

The scammers send out thousands of emails, hoping to hit some of the right customers because it only takes a few and they're in business. â€˜Phishingâ€™ is so bad right now the US Justice Department just issued a big warning about it this week.

For people who use Microsoft's Internet Explorer, they can go to www.microsoft.com/security to download a special security patch. For those who got one and responded, go to www.ic3.gov and report it. For people who got one and didn't yet respond, forward it to uce@ftc.gov.

Another big scam going around right now is people asking for your bank account information so they can deposit a bunch of money from some estate, just delete it.