Many people are probably familiar with the whole e-card fiasco where people would send people e-cards bundled with malware, but there is now something new that you should know about.  You can consider this more of an ‘indirect’ method of phishing, but it will probably still work very well.  Phishers are now mass-sending emails that seem to come from legitimate organizations and the like.  These emails consist of thank you’s and confirmations for signing up for a site.  The goal is then to have to change your password.  Even though you never signed up with the ‘organization’, phishers hope you will enter a generic password that you use for all of your other accounts.  So, while this is indirect, phishers are playing with psychology to indirectly acquire passwords tied to your actual accounts.

Arriving in inboxes around the world now are the latest email phishing attacks, socially engineered once again to appear legitimate to try and capture users, experienced or not, off guard – how do you protect yourself?

Over the past few months, e-card spam coupled with a phishing link has tried to entice users to click the link and visit a specially designed website which will try to silently install malicious software (malware) and recruit your computer into a botnet army by turning it into a ‘bot’.

The e-cards were supposedly sent by a neighbor, classmate, worshipper, friend, work colleague and others, with the email urging you to open and enjoy your “awesome card”.

The cards appeared addressed from real world greeting card companies such as Hallmark and e-card companies such as Bluemountain.com, but had a link that usually started with numbers, followed by more text and numbers.[more]

Tags: Identity Theft