Gov. Linda Lingle got an email on her home computer last week, and the subject line read: PRIVATE URGENT MESSAGE FROM CITIBANK. The senders, unaware of the celebrity of their target, wanted her personal data, like credit- card or Social-Security
Gov. Linda Lingle got an email on her home computer last week, and the subject line read: PRIVATE URGENT MESSAGE FROM CITIBANK.
The senders, unaware of the celebrity of their target, wanted her personal data, like credit- card or Social-Security numbers.
In other words, they were trying to scam the governor.
“The governor was on the receiving end of what’s known as a ‘phishing’ e-mail,” said Mark Recktenwald, director of the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.
“The fact that Governor Lingle received an unsolicited email of this kind shows that no one is immune to scammers ‘phishing’ for information,” Recktenwald said. “The governor doesn’t even have a Citibank account. But many people in Hawai‘i do.” The governor is not alone.
Hundreds of people in Hawai‘i receive these legitimate-looking e-mails every day.
Even The Garden Island newsroom isn’t immune to these types of scams. Reporters have been getting slammed for months with unsolicited e-mails promising everything from lottery winnings to large deposits to be made in their names from strangers in places like Africa and Southeast Asia.
Most recently, a “Dr. Tom White” has been trying to get one Garden Island reporter to call and submit personal information in order to collect on a lottery. Only problem is that the good “doctor” keeps changing his location. It’s the United Kingdom one day, Vienna, Austria the next. Financial fraud stemming from stolen credit cards or personal data grew from 12 percent in 2002 to 15 percent in 2003, according to officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Honolulu. And the number of personal computers infected with programs that can turn over control to intruders jumped from 8 percent in 2002 to 21 percent in 2003.
