Latest email scam starts with "Start with Trust"

[dropzone]

@slalexan

Whoa! Isn’t that a weird way to end a business email? I don’t know this Anni person and I don’t think I want them to be faithfully mine. Is this what you use if you are having an office affair? This alone would make me delete the email with disgust.

I dunno. Is she hot?

[curlcoat]

Wow, I guess it’s a good thing I’m 1) on a Mac, 2) don’t click links in emails and 3) don’t have a lot of money!

[digs]

@Regallag_The_Axe

Only on the SDMB could I try to be a snarky bastard and end up learning something instead.

Fun, ain’t it? I’ve been doing that non-stop since I got here. Snark, rinse, repeat.

[A_qui_profite_le_crime]

@kferr

The malware is typically a key-logger and some code that watches your internet activity. When you log into your online banking it captures your userid and password and sends it to a server the bad guys control. They then log into your online banking and empty your account.

Another version will install an invisible plugin into your browser to steal the session cookie created when you log into your account. The bad guys then use the cookie to create a duplicate session and empty your account.

But don’t all banks now have some sort additional offline confirmation system prior to executing any money transferring transaction? I’ve used three banks for my personal banking needs and:

• one sent a randomly generated security pin on my cell phone that I needed to insert before it executed any requested payment order
• the other two provided me with random pin generators devices, linked to my account, that generated said pins whenever I needed to execute a payment. One actually needed three of these random pins. One when logging in. One when requesting the transfer and one when confirming the transfer.

Sure, time-consuming, but felt it was worth it. Unless you tell me that’s just an inconvenience to hackers and not a real stumbling block in which case I’ll be seriously depressed.

[Musicat]

@A_qui_profite_le_crime

But don’t all banks now have some sort additional offline confirmation system prior to executing any money transferring transaction? I’ve used three banks for my personal banking needs and:

• one sent a randomly generated security pin on my cell phone that I needed to insert before it executed any requested payment order
• the other two provided me with random pin generators devices, linked to my account, that generated said pins whenever I needed to execute a payment. One actually needed three of these random pins. One when logging in. One when requesting the transfer and one when confirming the transfer.

I can transfer from my bank account to my paypal account with only the resources at my computer. With the same data (name, password, possibly a secret question/response), a program in my computer could do the same, and the bank doesn’t know the difference. All it knows is it got what it expected.

Other transfers, I don’t know. The procedure you use sounds like a good one, but if my bank sent a PIN to my cellphone, the chances are I wouldn’t get it, as cellphone coverage is poor in my area.

[BigT]

@Musicat

That’s the whole point of the malware. If you entered your bank name, number or password EVER in your computer, it might still be there, stored in plaintext, or easily decoded, either in RAM or in a file, possibly a browser work file. That’s what it’s looking for.

Not just before, but after, seeing as you won’t know you’re infected.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@slalexan

Whoa! Isn’t that a weird way to end a business email? I don’t know this Anni person and I don’t think I want them to be faithfully mine. Is this what you use if you are having an office affair? This alone would make me delete the email with disgust.

“Yours faithfully” (or the reverse) is the standard close for business letters addressed to people whose names you don’t know in most of the English-speaking world. Fowler’s Modern English Usage never really caught on in the US, which is why Americans chuckle when they see it.

[Musicat]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

“Yours faithfully” (or the reverse) is the standard close for business letters addressed to people whose names you don’t know in most of the English-speaking world.

Yeah, that phrase doesn’t seem odd to me. But most of the paragraph is mildly tortured English: “Better Business Bureau has got…”, “Please open this problem…”, “in respect of their dealings with you…”.

[Yllaria]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

“Yours faithfully” (or the reverse) is the standard close for business letters addressed to people whose names you don’t know in most of the English-speaking world. Fowler’s Modern English Usage never really caught on in the US, which is why Americans chuckle when they see it.

It’s really no odder than Sincerely Yours, which used to be common in the US.