Attention: Ignore fake emails from South Side Bank

May 24, 2007
By Billy Dennis

burglary.jpgI just received an email claiming to be from South Side Bank asking that I click on the link they sent me so that I could fix a “problem” on my account.

First: I don’t have an account with this bank.

Second: No legitimate bank in the world is going to send a customer an email asking them to give them account information. The bank ALREADY knows your information.

I checked the HTML to see where the link goes, and it’s not even going to a site in the United States. It’s safe to say South Side Bank has NOTHING to do with this email, nor would any other Peoria bank mentioned in any similar email. Some crook is has a list of banks and their locations and is sending random emails to people in these cities in the hope that one out of thousands sends him/her personal account information. No doubt other Peorians are getting similar emails.

Ignore these emails. They are worse than spam, they attempts at fraud.

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13 Responses to “ Attention: Ignore fake emails from South Side Bank ”

  1. Angie on May 24, 2007 at 3:03 pm

    I’ve been getting them from CHASE as well as National City too.

  2. Julie on May 24, 2007 at 3:08 pm

    Hopefullly with all the local news on this subject lately, the phishers will just move on.

  3. Billy Dennis on May 24, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    Julie, sadly, I don’t these criminals are local. All they need is a list of local banks for a variety of different communities and a list of email recipients that think are from these communities. Heck, Yahoo is known to sell this sort of information. And all it takes. It costs little to mail these things and all it takes it ONE score and they’ve more the recouped their investment.

  4. Applebee on May 24, 2007 at 4:03 pm

    Gee What a brain. These emails have been around for a long time and if you use IE7 with the phish filter on, it will tell you the site isn’t legit. Is this your first christmas? They don’t need a list of anything other than some email addresses which is why you got one and you’re not a SS Bank customer.

  5. Billy Dennis on May 24, 2007 at 4:16 pm

    Thanks for the input!

  6. 11Bravo on May 24, 2007 at 4:28 pm

    Applebee,

    Congratulations on re-iterating everything Bill had already said about why he got the email. What a productive use of your sarcasm skills. Maybe you’d like to inform us all of some other flash of your brilliance like: “its Thursday”.

  7. vaspersthegrate on May 24, 2007 at 4:45 pm

    never give your email addy to any hospital, bank, etc.

    thataway, you’ll know any email allegedly from them is a spoofing phish scam.

  8. vaspersthegrate on May 24, 2007 at 4:48 pm

    BTW, if there are any trolls hanging around here, I’m about to become their worst Harry Potter nightmare.

    http://twitter.com/vaspers

  9. Billy Dennis on May 24, 2007 at 4:50 pm

    Trolls? Here? Nah …

  10. diane vespa on May 24, 2007 at 6:21 pm

    Whew, its a good thing I didn’t get scammed by these pfishers from south side bank. I need ALL my money to send to Nigeria via Western Union. Turns out, I am a distant relative to one of their ancient Kings. As soon as I pay this Nigerian attorney I will be RICH! Yee hhhhhhhhhhawwww!

  11. ben on May 24, 2007 at 7:03 pm

    CEFCU has had a warning on their homepage for a while now (a month, maybe?), warning that people are actively phishing for CEFCU members’ info.

    It may be a pain in the behind, but there are two steps you can take to remain relatively sure your private information stays private.

    1. Never click a link to a bank, paypal, etc. Always enter the URL yourself. That will stop any phisher who isn’t also a 1337 h3×0r.
    2. To avoid being man-in-the-middled, always use encryption. Full-page SSL on websites and a landline or WPA-encrypted wireless connection to the ‘net.

  12. SD on May 24, 2007 at 7:34 pm

    I received a canned message call Sunday morning regarding my account at “so and so” bank. Half way through it I hung up. Then I got to thinking about it and did a *69 and found out where the call came from. It was a local 692 number. I called our local police department Monday morning and reported it. They should be able to trace the call with reverse directory and find out who in the area is doing this. Just because the email address comes from out of the country doesn’t mean they are out of the country. This one is right here in our backyard.

  13. Josh Carter on May 25, 2007 at 8:44 am

    South Side Bank sent me an email notice the other day, saying to send them money or I will lose my house. I told them Billy said it was a scam, and they preceded to tell me that I have my mortgage thru them and that if I default I will be on the streets. I told them that they do have a valid point, but how do I know its really them…and then they gave me my balance and they were right. Thanks Billy, they want me to keep sending them checks every month.