1. Contact the bank by phone, confirm that nothing is wrong with the account and alert them of this fraud attempt, that way she was covered if anything should happen.
2. Full Virus check to ensure no trojan activity.
3. Emptying of all temp folders and cache folders (I use windows and Internet washer), and not to use Internet explorer again, ever. I recommend Sea Monkey, previously Netscape, it's more secure and doesn't offer any unauthorised extensions for toolbar insertions, a popular source of browser microcode access.
4. Use a program called NoAdHosts.exe, this re-writes the Host file that windows uses to direct internet activity. This program removes ALL advertising re-direction, and 'locks-down' the files preventing any more unauthorised changes.
5. Also, another common method is to corrupt the Winsock dll file that is used for ALL internet/network use, a popular target for Anti-virus scammers (scan your system blah blah). This was fixed using WinsockXPFix.exe.
    
   The result: the re-direction stopped, my daughters machine fully operational again, and money still in the account.
    
   I learnt the hard way, this happened to me a month before my wife died last year, attempts to access my account were made on 3 seperate occassions from a middle-eastern country in the region of Iraq/afghansitan. No money was taken, but i did have to go through the process of proving who I was to the bank in person.
    
   The point of this mail, to highlight the main targets..kids with money, students..tuition fees, loans etc ! They are easy prey on their first steps in the outside world. I hope this mail has been of some help, luckily, my daughter is a student rep and has been able to make others aware of the same process and highlight this potential honey -pot for scammers.
    
   I applaud your steps to bring this to the fore, well done, I'll support where and when I can, firstly being to put a link to your site on my own site http://www.neilspages.co.nr so the word may spread.
    
   All the best,
    
   Regards
    
   Neil Calderbank (Bolton. Lancashire)

Hi,

 I applaud you in setting up your website relating to cyber fraud and deception etc.

One thing that I do think you should highlight on your site is that a common thread to practically all of these on-line scams is that they prey on their victims' greed although this does not apply to the banking scams such as Abbey National etc.

However, the attempted exploitation of someon'e fallibility to greed is not an easy fact to accept, particularly for those who fall victim to such scams, but it is nonetheless true.

That is perhaps almost as big a problem in our society today as the scams.

Incidentally I deliberately innocently played along with an attempted 'Nigerian' type scam while detailing the whole event as a journalist. Someone spent many hours over several months chatting with me on MSN messenger as part of the 'grooming' process.

A full seven months later I was asked to provide my postal address and name so that a cheque could be sent to me and I was to send some of the cash to someone who was "trying to flee a difficult situation in another country".

A cheque did indeed arrive, an exceptionally well printed Barclay's international cheque for £5000 (every bit as good as the real thing), which I then forwarded to Barclay's Head Office on the Isle of Man together with a note giving my concerns regarding the cheque and its origins.

In a blind panic, my own bank (in Ireland) suspended my bank account for attempted fraud, despite my having notified them of what was taking place. It took the threat of legal action by myself to my own bank before they restored the account to normal.

Barclays found the cheque to be an exceptionally well printed forgery that referred to a non-existing account. But the scam was to get someone to post out the requested payment, in this case £3500, on receipt of what the victim would think was a genuine cheque. The victim would also be tempted by the prospect of earning £1500 for practically nothing. Many such cases of these abound, with differing amounts. Others as you will know require travelling to somewhere like Amsterdam to 'release' by cash payment a suitcase full of money.

Ludicrous as it may seem, all of these scams depend on their victim's fallibility to greed.

I think that should be highlighted on your own site.

Best Wishes

Keith

Dear Caroline

"I thought you might be interested in the attached scam email which purports to come from a domain registration company but in fact is nothing more than a phishing exercise. The email was received yesterday afternoon and subsequently caused quite considerable hair tugging (and I don’t have a lot left to tug) until I identified that it was after all a hoax.  

Having worked for many years in the financial services industry I am well aware of the normal phishing email which wants me to log in to my bank account to correct some details, and then someone will use that information to later access my account and wipe out what few funds they can find.  But this type of email is different and could have far greater financial consequences.

 The email very nearly caught me out because I have recently made all manner of changes to our web domains and websites.  My knowledge of all things computer and web linked is growing but I am easily confused and this was just enough to have me panicking that I had missed something out and lost our web domain.  The only thing which stopped me going ahead, clicking though and verifying my contact information was that I know that we do not use enom.com for our registrations.  www.enom.com is a perfectly legitimate registration company but not ours.  Although not caught by the scam it has cost me quite a considerable amount of time on research and phone calls to get to the bottom of things.  I eventually followed the link from the email which took me to a login page, and then compared this to the true login page for enom.  They were identical in all respects except the tiny logo in the browser. 

The consequences of allowing someone access to our domain could have been catastrophic.  Anyone with that information could have completely altered our website, suspended our emails and held us ransom. As a Public Relations company we rely on our email systems and website and to suffer a potential significant downtime would be unthinkable.  It is bad enough when BT gets it wrong and we are without for a few hours, let alone a situation which could run into days. 

I hope it is of interest and that your site will in future provide the tools to make it much easier to identify this type of fraud."

Best regards 

Stewart

 "Just a short note, without going into too much detail, to let you know what happened with our credit card recently.

About a week ago, we received a letter from Citi Bank, stating that they were dealing with our request to forward all correspondence to our new address. My husband telephoned Citi Bank, to say that we had not moved to a new address and asked where we were supposed to have moved to.

Apparently, they had received a communication but would not say whether it was via telephone/letter, to redirect our account to an address in East London. They were adamant that it must have been my husband, as all of his personal details had been used and also that 3 purchases totalling £2,000.00 had been added to the card.

He asked if a stop could be put on his card – they agreed to do that at least.

Citi Bank assured us that someone from the Fraud Department would contact us – (we are still waiting for that call). We also asked for the latest statement, so that we could pay for our purchases and not the fraudulent ones (we are still waiting!). It does seem that anyone can change/redirect an account without the owners knowledge.

Could it be an employee at Citi Bank – it does seem very suspicious that they knew all our details, as we never discuss these with anyone else.

We are happy for you to use the above information but not to use our name."