An Auckland-based web hosting company says it has averted a potential phishing scam targeted at National Bank customers.
Web Drive managing director Daniel Williams says on Sunday morning staff came across a person from overseas who registered around 25 variations of the National Bank's web address.
"They used different credit card numbers to register the domains through our automated registration system, so our suspicions were quickly raised," says Williams.
Web Drive immediately cancelled the domains and re-registered them in their own name to prevent them from being registered elsewhere.
Phishing scams use blanket emailing and genuine looking content to trick customers into submitting their private banking details to a website that looks authentic, but is fraudulent.
The details are then used to transfer funds to another bank account without the user's knowledge.
"We suspect the domains' intended use was most likely to capture National Bank customers who mis-typed the bank's website address in their browsers," says Williams. "Fortunately we've prevented them from using the names, and it's now up to the National Bank to do what they want with them as we'll hold them for five days."
