Phishing

Dear Cardholder,

There are growing indications of emails created with fraudulent intent, aimed at eliciting personal data and card details from credit-card holders.
This method is called “Phishing” - derived from “password” and “fishing”.

These emails are forged!

In such cases, you most often see named as sender a credit-card organisation (MasterCard or VISA), a bank or any other institution generally acknowledged as trustworthy. Cases in which Lufthansa AirPlus Servicekarten GmbH was named as sender have not been known up to this day.

All defrauders use a similar procedure: Under false pretence you are asked, as cardholder, to give details on your person and on your credit card. The alleged purpose is a confirmation of your data or an inquiry for lost data. There are also indications of cases where your credit card has allegedly already been misused and your information is now needed to track down further criminal offences. Sometimes these emails are in the English language.

For these purposes, entire internet sites are forged in order to deceive cardholders. Even senders who are known to you, such as, for example, a company or a person you trust can appear – these sender addresses are also forged! Both the internet site and the emails can look extremely professional and are hard to uncover, even for experts.

Recently, there was also information on Phishing by telephone calls, using a similar procedure.

For this reason, AirPlus would like to point out that we and our partner banks and credit-card organisations never directly contact you in order to ask for any details relating to the cards or personal data, such as, for example, credit card number, expiry date, security code or personal identification numbers (PIN).

Information on any fraud is immediately pursued, and in addition experts search the Internet for such emails and their true senders. The offenders are prosecuted.

Please note the following indications on the subject of Phishing:

• Under no circumstances answer any emails inquiring about personal data or your credit-card number.
• Do not fill in any documents sent with such emails.
• Do not open any links contained in such emails.
• If in doubt, always contact the sender, or AirPlus, by other means.
• Check your account statement as soon as possible and immediately notify any irregularities to AirPlus! As a cardholder you are protected against such kind of misuse!
• Only give details on your person on the Internet if necessary.
• Whenever you give any confidential information on the Internet, do not use easily guessable passwords such as, for example, names or dates of birth. These can be relatively easily circumvented by pros.
• Use different passwords for your online accesses (bank, auctions, portals, etc.).
• Never send your passwords by email.
• Destroy all sensitive documents no longer needed (credit-card statements, letters with personal data such as PIN, ect.)

You can find further information at:

http://www.antiphishing.org/

or on the homepages of our partners.