Internet users warned of fake emails from NZ Government

1.20pm

E-mails are being sent from overseas to New Zealanders pretending to come from government addresses, the State Services Commission says.

The commission's e-government unit says internet users should be wary of e-mails pretending to come from the www.govt.nz portal.

Unit director Laurence Millar said e-mails being sent to internet users were falsely using "govt.nz" in the originating address.

But www.govt.nz is a domain name and not an e-mail address.

"People should be aware that there is no mailing list from this domain," he said.

The postmaster at www.govt.nz received some e-mails from internet users purporting to advise of a mail server failure at www.govt.nz, a unit spokesman told NZPA today.

Users were then invited to open a file that would "automatically forward" their mail on to them.

The e-mails were not traceable, originating from offshore internet service providers, which were unable or unwilling to disclose further information, and from "zombie" machines, which spammers control remotely to send torrents of messages to other users.

"These fraudulent e-mails were an example of a virus predicated on an abuse of trust, similar to 'phishing'," Mr Millar said today.

Phishing occurs when hackers use false e-mails to fool people into parting with personal details such as bank account numbers and passwords.

"Internet users should be extremely careful with regard to unsolicited e-mail, particularly those with attachments or requiring the installation of executable files on the user's system," Mr Millar said.

The unit has been working on developing solutions to mitigate against these types of attacks.

- NZPA