bandylank said: This is an article from our intranet.
I noticed that some people from this site have got similar emails.
Email Bank Phishing Scams – Please be Aware
This is to advise you that we are seeing a lot of emails which have the bank phishing scam virus. Phishing is a general term used to describe the practice of maliciously sending out emails which claim to come from legitimate sources and look real, but actually link to falsely created web sites where your information is stolen once entered.
In the main these phishing emails are being successfully dealt with by the Ironmail Antivirus and Spam server, as well as our internal email Antivirus solution – Groupshield.
We started seeing a marked increase in these emails last week, mainly associated with Barclays bank, but we have recently seen others purporting to come from the Halifax and HSBC.
Unless you are specifically expecting an email from your bank, we recommend that you do not release the email from quarantine. If you do release it, the email will be cleaned by Groupshield, and you will receive an email telling you that the virus was successfully deleted.
The following is a quick summary on good practice to adopt when you receive an email you do not expect:
Be suspicious of any email with urgent requests for personal financial information - unless the email is digitally signed, you cannot be sure it was not forged or 'spoofed'.
Phishers typically include upsetting or exciting (but false) statements in their emails to get people to react immediately. They typically ask for information such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc.
Phisher emails are typically NOT personalized, while valid messages from your bank or e-commerce company generally are.
Do not use the links in an email to get to any web page, if you suspect the message might not be authentic, instead call the company on the telephone, or log onto the website directly by typing in the Web address in your browser.
Avoid filling out forms in email messages that ask for personal financial information;
you should only communicate information such as credit card numbers or account information via a secure website or the telephone.
This McAfee article has more details on this particular family of viruses.
link [vil.mcafeesecurity.com]