Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Email Bank of America Scam

This has nothing to do with Medication Adherence or Healthcare, but an email scam I discovered and am passing along, which could directly relate to how you pay for healthcare.

I have never been one to put too much trust in online banking, although I do pay some bills online ( for 8 months) and check my balance every few days (for 3 years). I find it very annoying and helpful at the same time. Today I got the following email from customers_department-num-996dvy@bankofamerica.com:

"Dear Bank of America customer,

Security and confidentiality are at the heart of the Bank of America. Your details (and your money) is protected by a number of technologies, including Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption.
We would like to notify you that Bank of America carries out customer details confirmation procedure that is compulsory for all our customers. This procedure is attributed to a routine banking software update.

Please visit our Customer Verification Form using the link below and follow the instructions on the screen.

http://www9.bankofamerica.com/confirmdetails.jsp?site=25cydmOezksdDzrndydkcsdOkhb

Bank of America Customer Service"

Clicking on the link brought me to a very official looking B of A page that asked me to "Confirm your Bank of America credit/debit card details". It asked for my state, ATM or Credit Card Number, Exiration date, ATM or Credit Card PIN.

All very official looking as I stated (you can cut and paste if you want to check it out), except for the grammatical and spelling errors.

Interesting I thought. I do not have a personal B of A account, but we have a business account for BONDA Restaurant, which I co-own, and am a signatory but not the primary account holder. After looking at the page for 30 secs of so, I realized the email was send to an address I do not use for BONDA. Still strange, I thought, then I looked at the URL "www9.bankofamerica.com".

I can't remember the name of this type of URL, but I know it is some sort of scam.

The email has the B of A logo, and looks ligit. If I had a personal account, I might have have started to enter my info without really thinking, but most likely I would have taken a step back and asked why they would have wanted this information. I count myself somewhat savvy to the ways of scams, but I sometimes live in a bubble where I think I am immune to them.

Point being, this is a warning if anyone gets a similar email or would like to pass around the specifics to any B of A customers they know who might not have internet banking scams top of mind.

Thank you and beware!

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