Bank Hoaxes by email.
Have you ever received emails which
asking your account information? Some of them redirect you to bogus (fake)
websites where you must insert all your personal information such as: full name
and address, credit/debit card with pin number and SSN. Be careful…that may be
bank hoaxes. It''s important to know that banks do not send out messages to
"Dear Customer" asking you to confirm your security details. If you
receive a message from your bank, building society, or from PayPal, telling you
about some new security update, it is generally a hoax! The emails are most
likely to be from crooks impersonating the bank and hoping to fool you into
divulging your personal security data so they can steal your money!
Incidentally, the links in these messages don''t go to the banks, but somehow
are spoof sites which mimic the official bank sites and try to steal your
personal bank security details. Again, you should avoid being fooled by the
genuine looking header, which the spoofers have simply copied, as they aren''t
exactly worried about copyright or trademark issues! On careful inspection of
the spoof message, the text was sent as an image, suggesting an attempt to get
through various spam filters. For example, note that the Halifax actually know
their customers well enough to avoid addressing them as "Dear client of
the Halifax Internet banking"! Another bank hoax e-mail, faked up to look
like it''s supposed to be from Bank! As well as being sent to a harvested
address, other things that give it away as a foolish scam message are the
"Dear Bank customer", the false premise, and the random dodgy text
stuck on the end, (invisible to some systems, but not if you HIGHLIGHT it!). And
even more frightening message, pretending to be from Bank. It is of course NOT
from the Bank at all, but from some hoaxer hoping to scare you into following a
bogus link which would be unwise to say the least! It''s important to understand
these messages aren''t genuine, so be calm about it and don''t get caught up in
an epidemic of fear. In truth, bank accounts (such as at US Bank for example)
are sufficiently secure that a security problem like this would warrant more
personal attention than "Dear (anonymous) account holder". And if you
got is likely pretending to be from PayPal, be careful of the attachment, it
could be a virus, so if you''ve opened it you should get some anti-virus
software! PayPal would know your actual ID and not need to say "Dear
PayPal member". If you get any of this kind of stuff pretending to be from
PayPal, you can tell them about it by sending to spoof@paypal.com and they''ll
thank you for it. It''s also currently suspected that spam email messages
apparently from eBay are not actually from eBay, but are some kind of hoax like
these bank hoaxes, and are sent to try to get you to divulge your personal
security info! See eBay Spam Also be careful if you receive an online bill from
O2 as it''s a similar hoax. If it were a comedy movie, bank robbers might dupe
people by disguising themselves as "Bank Security Team" or some such
thing, and you''d laugh at how easy the on-screen customers fell for the joke
and ended up with the bank robbers stealing the money, but this e-mail scenario
is just as silly. So, don''t be fooled by it!