Malta Info Security

The Malta Bankers' Association has cautioned bank customers, and in particular Internet banking users, never to give out personal internet or telephone banking user identification details or passwords.

It is never any bank's policy or practice to contact customers and to ask them for such information.

Fraudsters often send forged e-mails, purporting to be from banks, designed to fool recipients into divulging such personal financial data. "Under no circumstances should customers respond to such requests, which could lead to financial loss," the MBA said in a statement.

Customers were asked to forward suspicious e-mails to their bank for further investigation. It also recommended that customers make active use of e-mail filtering software, which helps to identify fraudulent, malicious or hoax e-mails.