Website scammers try to fool ANZ customers

By RICHARD PAMATATAU

New Plymouth domain name company www.freeparking.co.nz has pulled the plug on a hosted website designed to fleece ANZ customers of credit card information.

The scam was discovered when recipients of an email asking them for credit card details on Thursday alerted freeparking.

The email followed the lines of the one that caught out more than 100 Westpac customers in November.

A spam email was randomly sent asking Westpac New Zealand customers to confirm their email address by following a link to a fake website that resembled the bank's site.

Having followed the link, customers were then asked to reveal their login name and password.

Those details would allow a fraudster to access a customer's accounts online and transfer funds.

Craig St George, freeparking technical manager said the company immediately began to disable the name which sent customers to a bogus website.

The email subject "ANZ information update" stated the bank had "encountered a billing error when attempting to renew your ANZ New Zealand online banking services.

"This type of error usually indicates that either the credit card you have on file has expired or that the billing address we have is not current."

The email continued with "information" from the bank's database which included a physical address, customer registration number and password, credit card number as well as expiry date.

Customers were asked to check the information and then update credit card information by clicking online at the address www.anz-billing.co.nz.


St George said this kind of scam would increase and there was little that could be done to prevent them.

He said the name was reserved on November 17 and paid for by a credit card.

Richard Shearer, general manager of freeparking parent company www.Webfarm.co.nz said it was impossible to check every name registered with them.

"There are over 30,000."

Cathy Wood, ANZ spokeswoman, said the bank was aware of the problem and put an alert on its site immediately.

She said a bank would never contact customers by email and ask for credit card details.

Barry Foster supervising analyst NZ Police electronic crime laboratory said it would be investigated if someone made a complaint.

This is on the increase and people need to be very wary of email like this, he said.