Spam Alert: Barclays Bank

Spam Alert

A new email threat has begun circulating.

Please carefully study the following information. Email mail like as this are a poorly disguised attempt to take advantage of computer users. If enough emails of this type are distributed, the spammer will usually receive some responses. It is simply a 'numbers game' : huge volumes of spam are sent out daily in the hope of fooling just a few people. Don't get taken in.

Subject: RE

Text: ****Barclays Bank****

Your email has been selected as the winner of our 2010 atm card award.

You are advised to keep this information confidentially away from the public to avoid fraudulent claim (IMPORTANT) pending of the delivery of your ATM CARD to you.

Note that because of impostors,we hereby issued you our CODE OF CONDUCT,which is (ATM-900) so you have to indicate this when contact us by using it as your subject. Complete the form below and send it to (barclay_bb@info.al) for the processing of your document and transfer of your ATM CARD to you.

(REQUESTED FORM)

CODE OF CONDUCT:_NAME IN FULL:_DATE OF BIRTH:_AGE:_SEX:_MARITAL STATUS:_HOME ADDRESS:_NATIONALITY:_COUNTRY:_OCCUPATION:_POSITION:_OFFICE ADDRESS:_TEL:_MOBILE:_

DECLARATION....I,Mr./Mrs._
do hereby declare that the information given above, is correct to the best of my knowledge and believe the same to be true.

Origin: IP Address 85.18.95.73 (Rome, Italy)

Threat Level: Email address and personal information harvesting for potential identify theft and future spam generation. Responders will almost certainly be added to additional spam lists.

Attachment: None

Exposure: Responding to this message gives up your contact data to the spammer, which may or may not be legitimate. Responding to the email address included in the body of the message will reveal your email address to the recipient, which confirms that you exist.

Pragmatism: The Barclays Corporation is certainly legitimate, but they would not give away an ATM card to a randomly selected email address. A legitimate notification would include a mailing address, a contact name, a telephone number, and a web site, but even this information is no guarantee of legitimacy.

The body of the message is completely generic: no specific recipient name, address, or even country of origin is mentioned. At the time of this writing, the domain name mentioned in the "From" address , fastwebnet.it, has no web presence, but is a registered domain name in Italy. However, clicking on "Reply" will generate a reply message to an entirely different address: barclay_bb@info.al. This domain, info.al, is a domain in the country of Albania. This domain provides free email accounts to anyone. Obviously, the Barclays Corporation would not use an email address created from a free service in Albania.

Strategy:

• Delete the message immediately.
• Do not respond to it. Never give out any contact information, social security number, bank deposit numbers, credit card data, or any other personal info to an untrusted web site or email sender. Simply responding to the message confirms to the recipient that you actually exist. You will be added to more mailing lists.
  
• Never open attachments from untrusted senders.
  
• Never forward any attachments from untrusted senders.