Richard’s Ramblings

This is a warning to all Citibank credit card customers:

I received an email today that read as follows:

Dear Citibank Member,

This email was sent by the Citibank server to verify your E-mail address. You must complete this process by clicking on the link below and entering in the small window your Citibank ATM/Debit Card number and PIN that you use on ATM.

This is done for your protection - because some of our members no longer have access to their email addresses and we must verify it.

To verify your E-mail address and access your bank account, click on the link below:
https://web.da-us.citibank.com/signin/citifi/scripts/email_verify..jsp

Thank you for using Citibank

This email is a fake!

While it appears to come from support@citibank.com, the message actually originates from either an IP address owned by the US Postal Service (56.253.136.0) or one in Belgium, possibly Brussels (IP address 81.241.55.227). If you click on the link (rather than cutting and pasting the URL) you are redirected to a website in Taipei, Taiwan (http://192.192.230.48/scripts/email_verify.htm) hosted at the China Institute of Technology. An IP address in Washington is also mentioned, 207.159.131.170.

Here are the full email headers (minus my personal contact information):

Return-Path:
Received: from 227-55.241.81.adsl.skynet.be (227-55.241.81.adsl.skynet.be [81.241.55.227]) by xxxxxxx.com (8.11.6/8.11.0) with SMTP id i1PGRJC66118; Wed, 25 Feb 2004 16:27:19 GMT (envelope-from support@citibank.com)
Received: from 56.253.136.0 by 81.241.55.227; Wed, 25 Feb 2004 19:23:18 +0300
Message-ID:
From: “support@citibank.com”
Reply-To: “support@citibank.com”
To: xxxx@xxxxxxx.com
Cc: xxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.com
Subject: Citibank E-mail verification
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 22:19:18 +0600
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=”–870503452819827″
X-Originating-IP: 207.159.131.170
X-UIDL: o&1″!K1[”!?EE”!F?M”!

Scary, huh?! Because of the possible connection with the US Postal Service, I have notified the USPS, the FBI, the FTC, and the Internet Fraud Complaint Center…

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