PSBank warns public about email scams

More than 205 billion emails are sent and received each day, but only less than 10 percent of the public are able to identify regular emails from phishing emails.

This poses a problem since phishing is one of the most popular scams used by Internet fraudsters to obtain sensitive personal and financial information.

Commonly associated with phishing is pharming, another scam that redirects web visits intended for legitimate websites of institutions like banks to fake websites they created to deceive their victims in disclosing confidential personal and financial data for their own gain.

Without knowledge about these scams and preventive measures against them, anyone can easily be robbed off their hard-earned money.

To address this, Philippine Savings Bank has made financial consumer protection as one of its top priorities to ensure its clients that all their financial transactions are safe and secured.

PSBank vice president for Information Security Division Dan Duplito reminds the public of the importance of being aware about these scams and the risks that come with them.

“The need to be aware of scams such as phishing and pharming is emphasized further as communicating and disclosing sensitive information through e-mail becomes more pervasive. That is why in PSBank we are advocating to fight these scams through an information campaign dubbed as Be Aware that provides our clients with tips on how to protect themselves against various scams,” Duplito said.

“One of the top priorities of PSBank is to assure our clients that all their financial transactions are safe. We also strongly advocate financial consumer protection by reminding everyone, so they too can protect themselves from becoming victims of scams,” he added.

While phishing and pharming share the same objectives, they are different in methods of acquiring information.

Phishing e-mails often come from unrecognized or unknown senders. The content of the emails ask the user to confirm personal or financial information by replying, clicking on a link, or downloading an attachment. The links found in these phishing e-mails can also lead to possible pharming incidents.