We want to help our customers better protect themselves against potential Internet threats. By familiarising yourself with current threats and past trends, you can increase of your chances of effectively combating the evolving tactics.

The most recent banking security threats are listed below:


Phishing is a scam where hackers 'fish' for your personal details by using emails claiming to be from financial institutions. This method continues to be favoured by online thieves.

Emails claiming to be from banks or other legitimate institutions are sent in bulk. The email asks the recipient to provide sensitive information such as their username, password, User ID or PIN by providing a link leading to an authentic-looking website, enabling thieves to gather the details for later fraudulent use.

An example of a hoax email is shown below:

Example of a hoax email


You can minimise your chances of being a victim of phishing scams by:

Spyware and adware


Adware is a type of spyware used by marketers to track Internet users’ habits and interests for the purpose of customising future advertising material. Adware can monitor information such as the types of sites visited, types of articles read, or the types of pop-ups and banners the user clicks on. The information is then used to customise future advertisements directed to the user, or can be sold to a third party for the same purpose.



Viruses and worms

A computer virus is software that attaches itself to another program. Similar to a biological virus, it must attach itself to another live program to survive and reproduce. Unlike trojans, which are self-sufficient programs, viruses can only run if the infected program is running. While active, the virus attempts to reproduce and attach itself to other programs. This can tie up resources such as disk space and memory, causing problems on any computer.

An email virus is the latest type of computer virus. It is transported through email messages and usually replicates by automatically distributing itself out to all contacts on the victim’s email address book.




A trojan is a destructive program that poses as a harmless application. Unlike viruses, trojans do not replicate themselves and do not need a host program to attach to.

Today’s computer users often accept trojans onto their computers, believing that the program is harmless or even helpful. Some trojans will claim to rid the computer of viruses or other harmful applications, but instead introduce viruses and leave it vulnerable to attacks by hackers.

You can minimise your chances of unintentionally downloading trojans by: