NAB: Customers less prone to phishing attacks

Internet banking customers are beccoming increasingly savvy in the face of the current onslaught of phishing scams.

That’s the view of the National Australia Bank (NAB), which was hit with yet another phishing scam over the weekend.

NAB spokesperson, Geoff Lynch, said the bank was aware of the latest scam but was confident its internet banking customers would not fall for it.

“There has been no increase [in the number of phishing scams] but there has been a marked decrease in the customers affected by scams,” he said. “We’ve reached a stage where customers are aware of the issue and now forward us examples of scams.”

The presence of the bank’s fraud detection team, which operates 24/7, also meant instances of customers losing money to such scams were now “extremely rare to non-existent,” Lynch claimed.

“To date there hasn't been an instance where money was not reimbursed to a customer [affected by a phishing scam] by the bank,” he said. “Our ongoing customer education campaign is working.”

Lynch would not comment additionally on the current phising attempt, which suggests either a growing brazenness, or the increased involvement, of amateur hackers.

The current attack is mailed from a Yahoo account with an Australian domain and picks no bones about its purpose - gonefishin2au@yahoo.com.au.

Whether the attack was a serious attempt at crime or a cheap thrill for hackers, is unknown.

As reported in IT News, the NAB was last hit by a phishing scam last month, believed to have been sent by a number of sites based in China.

At the time, Websense country manager Joel Camissar, said the number of unique phishing sites was on the rise, leaping from 198 in 2004 to 51,481 in December 2005.

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