Spooked

[KARL]

Like many, I have several e-mail addresses which I use selectively for certain categories of traffic. Unlike many, I have only ever had one credit card provider and I still have the same one. I do not have any form of other bank account with that provider, but I have accounts with more than one other bank. After holding for something like a decade one particular address which I use strictly for personal/private correspondence only, I am suddenly receiving scam e-mails based on (targeting) my credit card account and my oldest conventional bank connection. Prior to this I became the target (at the same address) of a substantial flow of American spam which I put down to an American contact's address book having been hacked into. I am spooked by the card and bank scams arrival because they come through an address which has never corresponded with either institution and the two are quite separate anyway. My wife uses the same bank but not the card provider, but she has her own e-mail account. My question is how has the targeting been so precisely designed without any obvious or even apparent link between the address and the banking business. I have not had any scam messages through any of the other addresses and I only have online arrangements with the card provider (not the bank) and have never communicated with them via the address in question. My only thought is that my wife and I have communicated through another address but copied to this address and that includes discussions where the two accounts have been mentioned. We are Norton Anti-Virus protected throughout and sweep for spy-ware. Is our e-mail being read and sifted through or can there be some other explanation ?

[rojash]

Are you sure that the targetting is that precise? I get many e-mails purporting to be from my banks and credit card providers, but also many which purport to come from banks and providers that I don't use.

Are you using any kind of spam filter? Is it possible that your own bank and CC provider are in your white list or mentioned in some of your filtering rules?

[chijiki]

Spam and/or phishing attempts are not 'precisely targetted', they are sent out to millions of email addresses in the hope that a few will respond.
The spammers or phishers either buy lists of email addresses or they use harvesting programmes to syphon email addresses from websites etc.
I get loads of phishing attempts every day from just about every bank name imagineable. Obviously some of them will be using the name of my actual bank.
If you have an email address that uses your name (eg [email protected]) the phishers will often start by addressing you as Dear John Smith. Its not rocket science but it's designed to look convincing and to fool you.

It is highly improbable that any of the spam or phishing is a result of anyone having any detail other than your email address which could have been obtained from anywhere.

[KARL]

I still find it uncanny that phishers should score 100% relevance for all attempts sent to me. If random chance gets you that sort of luck out of four attempts so far then I think I'll take to playing the lottery. My e-mail address does not carry my name. I am not being duped by these. My e-mail host provides blanket spam filtering which I have not customised in any way and certainly not mentioning the two financial institutions.