Spam Alert: ATM Card Dept HSBC Bank London

Spam Alert

A new email threat has begun circulating.

Please read the following information carefully. Electronic mail such as this is a weakly disguised attempt to exploit uninformed computer users. If enough emails of this type are broadcast, the spammer will almost always receive some responses. It's a simple 'numbers game' : huge volumes of spam are sent out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year in the hope of fooling a few folks. Don't get taken in.

Subject: ATM Card Dept HSBC Bank London.

Text: This is to officially inform you that(ATM Card Number;5201753100031117) has been accredited in your favour by the common wealth donation grant scheme.

Your Personal Identification Number is 3423.
The ATM Card Value is £500,000.00 GBP (Five Hundred Thousand great Britain pounds).

You are advice to contact Mrs.Melissa Gladstone via Email(customercareunit202@w.cn) with the following information FULL NAME:DELIVERY ADDRESS:PHONE NUMBER:COUNTRY:OCCUPATION:SEX:AGE:

You are to also send a scan copy of international passport or driver license for verification.

Best regards,Mrs. Maria Newton,
For Mrs. Tessa Jowell MP( Minister for the Olympics and Paymaster General)Cabinet of the United kingdom.

Origin: IP Address 85.18.95.72, Rome, Italy

Threat Level: Email harvesting and ID harvesting for potential identify theft and additional spam generation.

Attachment: None

Exposure: Responding to the email will reveal your contact information to the sender of the spam, which may or may not be legitimate. Responding to the email address included in the text of the message will reveal your email address to the recipient. Responding with your ID (as requested in the body of the email) would almost guarantee identity theft.

Pragmatism: A "common wealth donation grant scheme" is too vague to mean anything. The contact email for Mrs.Melissa Gladstone, customercareunit202@w.cn, is a Chinese domain for Windows Live. Similar to HotMail, this service is owned by Microsoft and is available to anyone.

If you did win the money, you would expect the email to know a little more about you, such as your name. The text of the message is too general to be legitimate; it could apply to anyone.

Strategy:

• Delete the email from your email client.
• Do not respond to it in any way. Do not ask the sender to be taken off their mailing list. Never reveal your contact information, social security number, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, or any other personal information to an untrusted web site or email sender. Simply responding to the message confirms to the recipient that you actually exist.
  
• Do not open any attachments from untrusted senders.
  
• Do not forward attachments from untrusted senders.

Background: Somehow your email address has been added to a spammer's database. This is not your fault. Email lists are traded between legitimate businesses and sometimes the information is stolen or hijacked by disreputable spammers. If you ever used your email address to register for a contest, sign up for a legitimate mailing list, or purchase something, you will inevitably be added to spam email lists. In some cases an individual home computer becomes infected with a virus and the contact list from that computer is transferred to a spammers computer without the knowledge of the original user. You will never discover how you got on the list; don't blame yourself.

Possible Actions:

• Report the spam to the Federal Trade Commission at http://www.ftc.gov/spam/.
• Upgrade your anti-spam software on your computer