CitiBank customers are being urged to be super-vigilant as a large scale phishing campaign has been targeting them, asking them sensitive banking details that can lead to money drain from their bank accounts or other such financial frauds such as fake loan appraisal.
Hacker is seen using the logo of the Citibank and is sending emails to customers, urging them to click on an embedded link to update their account details, in order to avoid their account suspensions, respectively.
Apparently, say around 91 customer have also fallen prey to this fraud, that came to light early last week when few of those victims opted to disclose their agony via social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
Nancy Twait, a Citibank customer from Texas city, said that an email she received looked genuine. And after reading the content, she felt something fishy, as it was filled with typos, thus forcing her to mark it as a spam.
But not all are so wise while seeking online services and this is where media is playing an active part in creating awareness among online bank users.
Security firm Bitdefender has been actively tracking this campaign and concluded that 81% of victims of this phishing campaign were from America. And only 7% were from UK and the rest from other parts of the world.
Such online frauds are common these days in developed nations and are slowly picking pace in developing nations such as Pakistan, India, Srilanka, Nepal, Singapore and Malaysia.
Apart from the regular Citibank scams, some people from west are also receiving emails promising them of loan approvals
In reality, all such email scams are fake and are launched just to mint money from innocent victims. For instance, an employee of a Tyre manufacturing firm in North Carolina holding a C level position received an email from Citibank that their firm was eligible for a $5,000,000 loan as a part of elite customer and she only needs to transfer $50,000 as a fee and to meet the off-shore tax to get the money into the company’s account.
The employee was happy and informed the management and started the process of claiming the loan, as they were badly hit by a month long shutdown in May 2020.
However, when she was on the verge of falling prey, the IT team of her company issued a warning and blocked the entire banking procedure before it was too late.
So, the best defense-line against such cyber attacks is to educate yourself about the latest in the cyber landscape by following news resources, twitter alerts and search engine trends.
Also remember that banks never send any request to their customers as SMS or email to update their account info. And if at all you receive, confirm it with your bank officials, or chat with the agent to get a confirmation. If you still have a doubt, visit your bank in leisure and detail them about the latest developments.
Furthermore, security researchers discourage users from calling phone numbers mentioned in an email or clicking on the website link that then takes them to a form filling page requesting personal details.
Finally, never reveal your OTP, CVV, or online password to anyone on the phone.
