This week friends of ours were caught with a scam where somebody emailed them a notice telling them that ABSA is upgrading their system and they wanted them to enter their username and pin on the “bank’s” web site. The short of the long story is that these scamsters emptied all 8 their bank accounts.

My question is that if these people transfered the money to another account, the bank are supposed to know who’s account that is. Nowadays you have to give all your FICA documents and whatever documents just to open an account. How the hell is it possible that these scamsters can transfer the money to another account without the bank knowing who’s account it is?

I cannot believe that there are still people who fall for this. I thought that by now everybody will know that this is a scam. Little did I know that some of my friends were caught that way.

One of the emails most frequently used has a subject line which make the recipiet believe that the email is intended to fight Internet crime. Here is an example of such an email. If you receive an email like this delete it, DO NOT respond to it:

Subject:  NOTIFICATION OF PHISHING ATTACKS
Dear ABSA Customers ,

ABSA customers have encountered countless issues with incessant phishing attacks on our numerous account holders, hence we are taking greater security measures to curb and curtail this attacks… Read more »