Trustee in Africa? E-mail scams prove troublesome in modern-age delivery

Last Tuesday, Annette Splenda received a mysterious text on her cell phone that stated, "Your Lorain National Bank ATM card has been suspended. Please call to reactivate your account." Even though she doesn't have an account with Lorain National Bank, she tried to call about the message. When she continually received a busy signal at the specified number, she called the bank directly.

"Please tell me you didn't respond," said the customer service representative at Lorain National Bank, and explained that the company had received calls from numerous people who had received the same text message. John Fuller of Lorain National Bank confirmed that the company has been flooded with calls about this fraudulent activity.

"This scheme, often called phishing, is something done by people, often from overseas locations, to get personal information from unsuspecting customers," said Fuller. "They often blanket an area hoping to get a response."

Fuller said that it is important in cases of possible identity theft to contact your financial institution to inform them that your personal information may have been compromised and to request copies of your credit report from all three major credit bureaus and place a fraud alert on your credit files.

Another local resident faced a different version of privacy invasion: E-mail spoofing. Friends and business associates of Wellington Township trustee Virginia Haynes received an e-mail last week saying she was in Africa and in need of financial assistance.

"This was really embarrassing, and scary. That e-mail could have included anything," Haynes said. "The amount of Internet fraud is just amazing. People need to be aware of what is going on."

In e-mail spoofing, a "worm" alters the sender address and other parts of the e-mail header so that it appears the e-mail is from someone other than the actual sender. The result is that although the e-mail appears to come from the address indicated in the "from" field it actually comes from another source.

If your e-mail address has been used in this way, and it is a paid account, contact your Internet service provider. If it is a free service such as yahoo or hotmail, you can either change your password, or set up a new account and inform your e-mail contacts that you are no longer using the old address.