E-Mail Scam: Russian Mafia Masquerade as First National Bank of Sioux Falls

My e-government survey is no scam (and it's still open! take it if you haven't already!), but a survey purporting to be from First National Bank of Sioux Falls sure is. I opened my inbox this morning and found this enticing offer:

Dear Customer,

CONGRATULATIONS !!!

You have been chosen by The First National Bank in Sioux Falls online department to take part in our quick and easy 5 question survey. In return we will credit $100 to your account - Just for your time!

Helping us better understand how our customers feel benefits everyone. With the information collected we can decide to direct a number of changes to improve and expand our online service.The information you provide us is all non-sensitive and anonymous - No part of it is handed down to any third party groups.It will be stored in our secure database for maximum of 3 days while we process the results of this nationwide survey.

We kindly ask you to spare two minutes of your time in taking part with this unique offer!

To Continue click on the link below:

http://www.fnbsf.com/survey/?accept5_cmd

Copyright © 2008 . All Rights The First National Bank in Sioux Falls

I've shut off the link, because it's a trick! There is no such webpage! In the e-mail, code behind the link doesn't send you to fnbsf.com, which is indeed your local banker, but this anonymous site:

http://adsl-75-17-78-198.dsl.peoril.sbcglobal.net:84/survey$fnbsf.com/

Don't copy it, don't click it, and for Pete's sake, don't enter any data in it!

I figured something was fishy, given that I don't have an account at First National Bank for anyone to credit $100 to. I checked fsnbf.com first, found the written link didn't work, and called customer service. FNBSF's Nicole knew exactly what I was calling about and said they're working to shut the scammers down.

My suspicion: Russian mafia. The language is just a little off ("time in taking part with this unique offer"?). I checked the HTML of the rest of the message and found the original text encoding was my old friend Windows-1251 -- Cyrillic! That's for Russian text! Fall for this scam, and you'll find a million rubles to Vladimir's Vodka Emporium on next month's credit card bill. Не попробуйте еще раз, товарищ.... Ларри Лонг вас смотрит!

Not a good week for info security for our area banks. Last week Mrs. Madville Times and I and some friends of ours received letters from Fishback Financial in Brookings saying someone had gotten into their database who shouldn't have and may have grabbed our personal info. One of my friends isn't worried -- he says his credit rating is so low, no identity thieves are going to do much damage. But it occurs to me that all these concerns about identity theft are one more reason to perhaps tighten up the credit industry and keep transactions local. Here's a thought: maybe we should actually restore "credit" to the original idea of real, face-to-face belief in the borrower. Maybe to get credit of any sort -- new credit card, home loan, whatever, you should have to walk into an office, look someone in the eye, and shake hands with someone who knows you, who lives in your community, and who can say from personal experience rather than from an arcane (and proprietary) credit rating, "Yup, I know you, and I know your word is good. Here's your loan."

Strictly local credit -- it would wreak havoc with international finance, but it would put an end to identity theft real quick.