Better Business Bureau & Identity Theft

August 19, 2008 by idhelper

The Better Business Bureau has a long history of helping cities, communities and consumers. They have earned the public's trust and that is just one of the many reasons why the Better Business Bureau is considered attractive bait for spear phishing scams.

Many of us have already heard of the term "phishing" in reference to e-mail scams where identity thieves were "fishing" for personal information like names, addresses, birthdates, social security numbers or account numbers. But spear "phishing" takes this con just one step further, instead of casting out "bait" to see who bites; spear fishing is sport where a specific fish is targeted for spearing. E-mil spear phishing is a scam that sends out mass phishing e-mails that target a small group of people, such as corporate executives, small business owners and individuals. Alan Pallar, director of research at the SANS Institute that trains security professionals, says that the profile of phishers is changing. "In 2002-2003, organized crimes groups figured out this is a better way to make money than selling drugs," says Pallar.

According to Art Manion, a top vulnerability analyst for CERT, an internet emergency response group based at Carnegie Mellon University, scammer's tactics are improving. They have evolved from the e-mail messages offering you a percentage of the 2.5 million dollars that an African prince needs to move, to threats to the security of your accounts on popular sites like PayPal, E-Bay and Amazon. Manion says "Today, the e-mail looks like it's from my bank or my company, with better grammar, more believable stories, and better URLs."

One of the latest scams used the Better Business Bureau to target to corporate executives. The mass spear phishing e-mails arrive saying they are from an address @idtheft.bbbb.org or consumer-complaints@bbb.org or fraud@bbb.org, none of which are Better Business Bureau addresses or even legit e-mail addresses. There are long lists of these fake addresses that have been used. Even as the Better Business Bureau spear phishing scams were being reported, identity thieves simple continued e-mailing using different addresses.

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