Some 300 Westpac New Zealand customers were fooled by a Russian email scam and revealed their internet banking passwords to fraudsters, the bank says.
Westpac spokesman Paul Gregory said some 300 of the banks customers had revealed their passwords, 100 more than was thought earlier.
The Westpac customers and others received an
email over the weekend asking them to confirm their email address by following a link to a fake Westpac website.
Once at the bogus site they were asked to enter their passwords.
It was possible more than 300 people had fallen for the scam, but not yet admitted it to the bank, Mr Gregory said.
About 1200 customers had changed their password details yesterday as a safety measure after receiving the email.
It was too early to say if the fraudsters had acted on the information they had obtained, Mr Gregory said.
"We still haven't seen any untoward transactions that have come out of people's accounts," Mr Gregory told NZPA today.
"That is an encouraging sign," he said.
Westpac became aware of the scam yesterday morning and posted a warning on its website.
But the bank was "pretty confident" it had shut the scam down in its early stages.
"We're keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn't resurface."
Police Electronic Crime Laboratory (ECL) national manager Martin Kleintjes said an investigation was underway.
The fake Westpac website had been traced to Russia and was last night shut down.
"Which means the link posted to thousands of people in New Zealand becomes useless," Mr Kleintjes said.
"If they want to do it again they'll have to re-send new emails but I'm sure people are aware of it now."
Chief executive of the Consumers' Institute David Russell yesterday described the scam as "very sophisticated".
"I think our problem as New Zealanders is that we can be too trusting sometimes."
A similar email scam hit customers of the Commonwealth Bank, which owns Westpac NZ, and ASB Bank in Australia earlier this year.
Mr Kleintjes said "rule number one" of internet banking was "never give out your password -- even to the bank".
- NZPA
