Suckers Wanted Here

I’ve received the following email a couple of times:

[Citibank logo here]

Dear client of Citi,

As the Technical Service of the Citibank have been currently updating the software, We kindly ask you to follow the reference given below to confirm your data, otherwise your access to the system may be blocked.

[hyperlink omitted]

We are grateful for your cooperation.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I fell for it long enough to click the link. The logo was the main thing that fooled me, and I didn’t read closely enough to catch the weirdness of the language. But fortunately, I’m not enough of a sucker to fall for the next step. The form-window that popped up asked me to provide:

Full name
ATM card number
Bank account number
PIN number
User name for online access
Social Security Number
Mother’s maiden name
Date of birth
Credit card number
Credit card expiration date
CVV2 number for credit card

Whew. If anyone is willing to give away that much information, I think they just may deserve to get their identity stolen. Interestingly, the link was set up so that it simultaneously opened the form-window just described and the actual Citibank website. Clever.