Internet Scam Warning

August 4, 2004

The advantages offered by the internet and electronic communication are significant but they are not without peril. Occasionally, criminals roam the internet searching for ways to extract money from you. I was recently made aware of a scam in which the criminals pose as representatives from Citibank attempting to gain personal information about your accounts. It is important to remain vigilant at all times regarding requests for personal data. Fortunately, there are often clues as to the fraudulent nature of the request such as misspelled words, incorrect addresses, or just plain bad grammar.

Financial Service Group is committed to protecting your privacy and important personal data. If at any time, you feel that a request received via e-mail is inappropriate or suspicious please contact our office immediately.

While I would never recommend you completely disconnect yourself from the internet, it is important to maintain an appropriate amount of caution whenever you deal with personal information.

I have included the details about this recent scam below which I received from a fellow financial planner to inform you about the sophistication and methods used to access your personal information.

Sincerely,

Michael P. Haubrich, CFP

The somewhat subtle keys to its fraudulent nature that I noticed were:

1. The incorrect usage of their name, as in Reply-To: service@citibanks.com
2. The lack of proper capitalization and punctuation in "Dear Citibank valued member"
3. The improper use of a comma in "Due to concerns, for the safety and integrity..."

4. The omission of a needed period after the sentence ending with "will result in
account suspension"
5. The improper capitalization in the signature "Citibank customer department"
6. The visible line: https://www.citibank.com/update/update.htm links to:
http:198.66.203.55/update

 If you just follow the link in the email, you are taken to a Web site that is most definitely NOT Citibank's.

I expect the fraud perpetrators to get even more competent in the future.

A lesson here is, be suspicious of every request you receive for personal
information!


Received Email

Subject: Citibank Online Banking Issue
From: <service@citibank.com>
Reply-To: service@citibanks.com
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 17:27:02 +0200


Dear Citibank valued member

Due to concerns, for the safety and integrity of the online
banking community we have issued this warning message.

It has come to our attention that your account information needs
to be updated due to inactive members, frauds and spoof reports.
If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and renew
your records you will not run into any future problems with the online service.
However,
failure to update your records will result in account suspension
This notification expires on Aug 5, 2004.

Once you have updated your account records your internet banking
service will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

Please follow the link below
and renew your account information:

https://www.citibank.com/update/update.htm

Sincerely,
Citibank customer department

End of Received Email