Phishing Warning

I received the following e-mail today, supposedly from my credit card:

[Bank Logo]

Last 4 digits of account number: [XXXX]

Dear Amanda Fischer,

We have important information about the status of your [bank name] credit card account. Please call us at 1-800-[XXX-XXXX] today.

Visit www.[bank name].com/creditcards for fast, reliable account service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You'll find our online account service makes managing your account fast and easy.

Customer Support Division

It certainly looked legit. I called the 800 number and was greeted by, “Thank you for calling [bank name]. May I have your sixteen-digit account number?” I said, "Well, before I give out my credit card number, I'd like to know that this is actually [bank name]. Can you verify that in some way?" He chuckled and said, "Um, how would you like me to do that?" I said, "I don't know. How do I know this isn't a scam? I mean, I got this e-mail about some supposedly important account info and it listed this number." He said, "I’m sorry, but I can't access your account to find that information without an account number." I said, "Well, I'm not giving some random person my credit card number over the phone. Bye!"

I immediately called the phone number on the back of my credit card, explained what happened and gave him the phone number from the e-mail. I was informed that this was, indeed, a case of phishing. He asked if I gave out any personal information (which I didn’t) and requested that I forward the e-mail to their fraud department.

This really scared me. They had my full name, e-mail address, what appeared to be the last four digits of my credit card number (although I later realized the digits were not correct) and knew I had a credit card with this bank. The warnings of fraud and identify theft are everywhere nowadays. And now I know why.