I just got this very important e-mail:
FEDERAL RESERVE BANKImportant:You're getting this letter in connection with new directions issued by U.S. Treasury Department. The directions concern U.S. Federal Wire online payments.A country-wide phishing attack began on April 21, 2009. It's taking place hitherto. Therefore a great number of banks and credit unions is affected by this attack and quantity of illegal wire transfers has reached an extremely high level.U.S. Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in common worked out a complex of immediate actions for the highest possible reduction of fraudulent operations. We regret to inform you that definite restrictions will be applied to all Federal Wire transfers from April 29 till May 8.Here you can get more detailed information regarding the affected banks and U.S. Treasury Department restrictions: [website]Federal Reserve Bank System Administration
I'm so lucky the Fed sysadmin has my email address to warn me about this! The email was from a domain registered to a Ms. Rebecca Nahhas supposedly of Cullowhee NC, although the street address was fake. You can call her at (828) 293-7486 to ask for her real one. The website (which seems to have been taken down) linked from the email was registered to a company called DomainLeads in Toronto. Sounds completely legit to me.
By the way, good Firefox addons for the security-conscious to have are NoScript and FlashBlock.
