{Slightly ot} Responding to bank phishing requests?

[C R Ritson]

Three of us here were commenting on the increasing fidelity of purported
re-validation requests that attempt to get you to divulge bank details
to criminal third parties.

Would there be any point in poisoning the hacker's list of target
accounts?

How sparse are bank account numbers?

How easily detected would the fakes be?

Would the appearance (I presume) of bank transfer requests for funds
from nonexistent accounts cause the perpetrator to attract unwelcome
attention from officialdom any quicker than is normally the case?

If a set of bogus details happened to collide with someone else's bank
account would I be liable?

Chris Ritson (Computing Officer and School Safety Officer)

Room 707, Claremont Tower,        EMAIL: C.R.Ritson@ncl.ac.uk
School of Computing Science,      PHONE: +44 191 222 8175
Newcastle University,             FAX  : +44 191 222 8232
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE1 7RU.  WEB  : http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/