The Internet is a powerful communication tool that Masraf Al Rayan relies on to provide investment research, portfolio management and other services. However, the Internet is also a source of fraud that can take a variety of forms including 'spoofed' e-mail and bogus websites. "Phishing" is a rampant Internet scam that relies on 'spoofed' e-mails, purportedly from well known firms, to lure individuals to fraudulent websites that look and feel like the well known firm’s website. At such websites, victims are asked to provide personal information about themselves, such as their name, address and credit card number. These fraudulent e-mails and websites may also try to install malicious software on your computer that monitors your activities and sends information to a remote location. With that information, criminals can commit identity theft, credit card fraud and other crimes. You can protect yourself by following these best practices when using the Internet:
Be aware that e-mail is insecure and easy to forge. E-mail that appears to be from a friend or company you do business with may be fraudulent and designed to trick you into providing personal information about yourself or installing dangerous software
Do not respond to e-mails or pop-up messages that solicit your personal information; name, address, phone number, identification number, birthday etc.
Only access trusted websites that you add to your browser’s bookmarks. If a website is not bookmarked, manually type the address into your browser and then bookmark it. When you receive an email, rather than clicking on a website address provided in the email which can then direct you to a fraudulent site, use the bookmark to access that site
Make sure that the website has a lock at the bottom right of the page, otherwise it is not a secure page
If you receive an e-mail from Masraf Al Rayan that you believe to be fraudulent, please forward it to info@alrayan.com. Masraf Al Rayan will investigate the e-mail and respond back to you. If you are a client of the bank, please notify your sales representative or investment professional as well.
You can further protect yourself by following these best practices to secure your personal computer:
Instal Anti-Virus software on your computer and make sure it is up to date with the most recent virus signatures
Make sure your computer is up to date with the most recent software ‘patches’. These are software updates that often address software vulnerabilities that phishing scams and viruses exploit
Instal a firewall which acts as a buffer between your computer and the Internet, limiting access to your computer and blocking communication from unauthorised sources.
Glossary of Internet terms
Phishing: Phishing attacks use 'spoofed' e-mails and fraudulent websites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers are able to convince up to 5 percent of recipients to respond to them.
Firewall: A system designed to prevent unauthorised access to or from a private network. Firewalls can be implemented in both hardware and software, or a combination of both. Firewalls are frequently used to prevent unauthorised Internet users from accessing private networks connected to the Internet, especially intranets. All messages entering or leaving the intranet pass through the firewall, which examines each message and blocks those that do not meet the specified security criteria.
Patch: Also called a service patch, a fix to a program bug. A patch is an actual piece of object code that is inserted into (patched into) an executable program. Patches typically are available as downloads over the Internet.
Computer virus: A program or piece of code that is loaded onto your computer without your knowledge and runs against your wishes. Viruses can also replicate themselves. All computer viruses are manmade. A simple virus that can make a copy of itself over and over again is relatively easy to produce. Even such a simple virus is dangerous because it will quickly use all available memory and bring the system to a halt. An even more dangerous type of virus is one capable of transmitting itself across networks and bypassing security systems.
Anti virus software: A utility that searches a hard disk for viruses and removes any that are found. Most antivirus programs include an auto-update feature that enables the program to download profiles of new viruses so that it can check for the new viruses as soon as they are discovered.
URL: Abbreviation of Uniform Resource Locator, the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web.
Spoof: In networking, this term is used to describe a variety of ways in which hardware and software can be fooled. IP spoofing, for example, involves trickery that makes a message appear as if it came from an authorised IP address.
