What Is Phishing?

Phishing is an attempt by fraudsters to 'fish' for your banking details. A phishing attempt usually is in the form of an e-mail that appears to be from your bank. The e-mail usually encourages you to click a link in it that takes you to a fraudulent log-on page designed to capture your details. E-mail addresses can be obtained from publicly available sources or through randomly generated lists. Therefore, if you receive a fake e-mail that appears to be from ICICI Bank, it does not mean that your e-mail address, name, or any other information has been taken from our systems. How The Fraudsters Operate? Fraudsters send fake e-mails claiming that your information has been compromised, due to which your bank account has been de-activated/suspended, and ask you to hence confirm the authenticity of your information/transactions like credit card number, personal identification number (PIN), passwords or personal information, such as mother's maiden name. In order to prompt a response, such e-mails usually resort to using statements that convey an urgent or threatening condition concerning your account. While some e-mails are easy to identify as fraudulent, others may appear to be from a legitimate source. However, you should not rely on the name or address in the “From” field alone, as this can be easily duplicated. Very often, such phishing e-mails may contain spelling mistakes. Even the links to the counterfeit websites may contain URLs with spelling mistakes, to take you to a fake website which looks like that of your bank. Some fake e-mails promise a prize or gift certificate in exchange for your completing a survey or answering a few questions. In order to collect the alleged prize, you may be asked to provide your personal information. Fake e-mails appear to be sent by companies to offer a job. These are often for work-at-home positions that are actually schemes that victimize both the job applicant and other customers. Fake e-mails may direct you to counterfeit websites carefully designed to look real. Hence such websites may look very similar and familiar to you, but are in fact used to collect personal information for illegal use. Such e-mails attempt to convey a sense of urgency or threat. Example: “Your account will be closed or temporarily suspended if you don't respond.”Or, “You'll be charged a fee if you don't respond.” Tips To Protect Yourself From Phishing ICICI Bank will never send e-mails that ask for confidential information. If you receive an e-mail requesting your Internet Banking security details like PIN, password or account number, you should not respond. Whenever you use a link to access a website, be sure to check for the URL of the website and compare it with the original. We recommend that you type in the URL yourself whenever you access www.icicibank.com or bookmark/store the URL in your list of ‘Favorites’. Delete suspicious e-mails without opening them. If you happen to open them, do not click any link or attachment they may contain. If you receive a job offer via e-mail, ensure that it's from a genuine and reputed company. To secure your computer, read our “Computer Safety Measures".