Email Scams Disguised As an Official Email From Your Bank

Email scams are every growing, and increasing almost as quickly as financial institutions are able to deal with them. One of the ways email scams are tricking vulnerable users who may not be aware of the nefarious users out there simply phishing (pretending to be from an official site inorder to steal login details) for their details is to pretend to be an official email from their bank.

First of all the scammer has to obtain the email address of the potential victim, there are various ways scammers obtain these, at the end of it, the potential victim may have responded to an email advert or their email address has been passed from another scammer that this is a potential victim, or they simply just harvested email addresses; whether bought or scraped the end game is mass emailing all potential victims for the few that may fall for it.

Of course if you do not bank with the bank stated in the email you would know something was not right, however if you do bank with said bank, you may be a little alarmed, to find the title of the email along the lines of "Warning your login details have been compromised. ...login to said site to recover them", the site in question may look like the official site of the bank complete with bank logo, even in the email, however the give away is if you were to right click on the link on the email you would see it redirects not to the official site of the bank, but to the scammer's phishing site, where they hope you would be naive enough to fill in your account details, for them to save and utilise at their convenience. A sample email is below:

Dear Valued Customer,

We're committed to protecting you when you bank with us. Our industry-standard levels of security ensure that you can always access your Lloyds TSB accounts online with confidence.

To ensure you are always protected, we are introducing a new programme of security initiatives called BankSecureTM. Over the next few months, you'll see a number of initiatives that we'll put in place to make sure you stay secure and to help you protect your Internet Banking information. We're here to help you stay safe while banking online. For more information and advice on security log on below.

LINK REMOVED

Thank you for banking with us.

Mr D Stevens is a reviewer at Email scams