WPCNR SERGEANT JOE FRIDAY REPORTS. From Don Hughes October 9, 2008: A frequent contributor to WPCNR, Don Hughes advises that communications from banks received by e-mail may be covers to access personal information, and not from your bank at all:

The current financial crisis has provided a fertile new area for scam artists.  They are blasting out e-mails claiming that it necessary for you to provide account and other personal details to the firms new owners for verification purposes.  Some of the scams are quite well done, even including links to legitimate web pages.

Do NOT respond to these requests.  Financial institutions would ask for such information via regular mail, not e-mail.

Here is a link for an example claiming to be from Chase: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10057180-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1009_3-0-20s