Consumers in Australia are being hit every day with hundreds of emails that are suppose to be from the Commonwealth Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank however investigators and the banks say they are all part of a massive global scam to extract money.

Credit card fraud ­ and particularly online transactions ­ accounts for the lion’s share of most types of financial fraud, including those involving cheques. The rate of credit card fraud has grown over the past year from 45 cents per $1000 to 53 cents in 2008, says the Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA)

According to the APCA, increases in Australia’s card fraud are through increases in card-not-present (CNP) fraud and counterfeit and skimming. In comparison, fraud on cheques remains very low, with less than a cent in fraud for every $1000 and only four fraudulent transactions out of every million.

CDN has firsthand experience. This writer nearly became the victim of a failed phishing attempt to defraud her of the contents of her credit card by fraudsters quoting an outdated payment to a bank in a vain attempt to gain her name and password. The bogus bank site was almost the spitting image of the original.

This writer phoned the bank in question and they confirmed it was a fake.

Thanks to that, we got there in time to change the password.

A Commonwealth Bank spokesman says while the bank will generally reimburse defrauded funds there is not a lot that can be done once the horse has bolted.

“There are a lot of scammers and spammers out there,” says Steve Batten, media manager at the Commonwealth Bank. “While it may seem there is a lot of this happening, and these sites look official, using cut-and-paste logos, the onus is on the customer not to click that link.”

Batten says the bank does not supply figures on how many of its customers are being defrauded in this manner, but says the number is not “significant.” ­ Kate Castellari