Claim: Citibank is sending out checking account suspension
notices and asking customers to verify their acceptance of new
terms and conditions.
Your Checking Account at Citibank
We are letting you know, that you, as a Citibank checking account
holder, must become acquainted with our new Terms & Conditions
and agree to it.
Please, carefully read all the parts of our new Terms &
Conditions and post your consent. Otherwise, we will have to
suspend your Citibank checking account.
This measure is to prevent misunderstanding between us and our
valued customers.
We are sorry for any inconvinience it may cause.
Click here to access our Terms & Conditions page and not allow
your Citibank checking account suspension.
Origins: Yet
again a redirection scam has hit the Internet in the guise of
messages appearing to come from a well-known financial entity; in
this case the wolf is disguised in the clothing of Citibank.
Just like scams perpetrated earlier this year using PayPal and
various Internet service providers as camouflage, this one involves
messages which appear to be coming from Citibank itself. In this
case the fraudulent message falsely announces that Citibank has
changed the Terms & Conditions of its checking accounts and
informs the recipient that he must follow a hyperlink to indicate
his acceptance of these new conditions or his account will be
suspended. In a classic case of redirection scamming, however, the
page the user is taken to after clicking the link does not reside
on the real Citibank site; it's a phony page camouflaged to look
like a real Citibank page and hosted on the web site of Nanhua
Futures Trading Co. of Zhejiang, China. (Since the redirection URL
is an IP address rather than a domain name, the ruse isn't
obvious.) The faux Citibank page records the visitor's e-mail
address and asks him to enter the first four digits of his
Citibank® Banking Card number and his full name, then hides the
ruse by bouncing him back to the real Citibank's terms and
conditions page.
According to the warning Citibank has posted on their web
site:
Citibank is working with law enforcement to aggressively
investigate a fraudulent email that has recently been sent as spam
to numerous email addresses. Although the email appears to come
from Citibank regarding "Your Checking Account at Citibank," it
does not, and Citibank is in no way involved in the distribution of
this email. The email tells recipients that their Citibank Checking
Account will be suspended unless they accept new Terms and
Conditions and directs them to a site that appears to be
Citibank's. The fradulent site requests the customers' name and the
first 4 digits of their ATM card number.
Citibank urges recipients of this email to delete it immediately.
Citibank does not ask customers to provide sensitive information in
this way. Customers who receive suspicious email purporting to be
from Citibank are encouraged to report it to customer service at
the number listed on their ATM card. Citibank's systems have not
been compromised in any way.
Scams that trick the gullible into revealing private information by
having them "confirm" details presumably already in the possession
of the one doing the asking fall under the broad heading of "social
engineering," a fancy term for getting people to part with key
pieces of information simply by talking to them. The wary
consumer's best defense to such maneuvers is a zipped lip (or, in
the online world, an untapped keyboard). Protect yourself by
volunteering nothing, even if you feel somewhat pressured by the
one doing the inquiring. If someone on the telephone asks you to
read off your checking account number for "verification," ask him
instead to recite it to you from his records. If you get an e-mail
announcing something dire has befallen one of your on-line accounts
and requiring you to re-enter sensitive personal data to get things
back on track, do not reply to it, and do not fill out any forms
that accompany it or click through any hot links it provides.
Instead, contact that service through its web site and ask them
about the e-mail.
The con artists are getting more sophisticated all the time, so do
not be too quick to mistake the appearance of legitimacy or
authority with legitimacy itself. Just because an e-mail looks like
it comes from an entity you do business with doesn't mean it's
genuine, and just because you're being directed to a web page that
looks like that entity's home page doesn't mean you're not being
sent somewhere else. Beware the wolf in sheep's clothing lest you
end up his dinner.
Status: False.
