#Middlebury #EquifaxBreach #Phishing
By MARJORIE NEEDHAM
The Equifax data breach has made consumers more nervous than ever about their identities being stolen and people racking up charges on their credit cards. And well it should have, because now it appears phishers (those who send fraudulent emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information such as passwords and credit card numbers) have decided they can benefit from this latest consumer misfortune.
Today I found an email titled “Unusual sign-in detected” in my inbox, and my mind immediately skipped to the Equifax data breach and the thought that someone had accessed my personal information. I opened the email, which said it was from one of my credit card companies. It showed two charges to my card, one accepted and one denied. These were not charges I had made. The email instructed me to click “No” if I didn’t recognize the charges and “Yes” if I did recognize the charges.
But something about the email didn’t ring true. So I left the email and signed into my credit card account to check on recent activity. The charge listed on the email as accepted was not listed on my account. I then looked up the fraud department and found instructions to forward the email there.
Returning to the questionable email, I first forwarded it to the fraud department. Then I began to look at it more closely. It was supposed to be from my bank, but the return email in brackets said trina.pippins@signius.com. There is a company by that name. Maybe that company’s names was “borrowed” by phishers and used the same way our personal phone numbers are being used by phone scammers?
Then, just to be sure, I called my bank. The bank confirmed this is a phishing email and pointed out two other things: The email says “Dear Customer” while the bank always uses the customer’s first and last names in correspondence and the bank does not include clickable links in its emails to customers.
Beware, folks! There is always someone out there trying to take advantage of situations like the Equifax data breach.
