Beware - Halifax scam

P

park381

Nori Brick
Tackler
Have just received an email from the Halifax or so it would seem, the email asked me to update my online banking details, not having any accounts with the Halifax I phoned their help line, it is not one of ours, please forward the email to our investigations team.
So Accy webbers if you have an account with the Halifax and you get the same email.......delete it. Have attached a scan of the email for information.
 

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I think the underlying advice here is don't believe any email that claims to be from your bank/ebay/paypal etc asking for you to confirm logon details. I don't know of ANY reputable company that would ask you in that way.
 
Paypal has a lot of spoof emails. Never click on a link in an email for paypal. If ever in doubt always go to the main site and sign in from there. Any updates and it will let you know.
 
had funny email from ?Ebay but when i contacted them from main site they asked me to forward it to them and they then sent me a reply thanking me for doing so as it was a new one to them at that time....

NEVER put details to emails always go to the MAIN/HOME page of any organision to change your details. I never work of links in emails just off main/home pages.

Keep your brass and your ID safe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I had an email from Halifax to, slightly different to the attachment, it confused me somewhat as I had just set up an online standing order from my bank(natwest) to my childrens accounts that are with the Halifax. just a coincidence it came the same day?

Thanks for the warning though park. I will pass on the mail as you said

Romps X
 
its always a sad fact that although some people are switched on to these scams others arent...the scammers send 100's of these emails out and only have to be lucky once ..so some poor unfortunates going to suffer .good on you for enlightening us ..and reminding us to be vigilant..
it also pays to be extra carefull around atms the buggers are rigging them so they can scim your card details!!!
 
Following the Halifax one, just had today an email from Barclays, sent that one off to their internet scam people
 
Yep, and if you ever get one of these scam letters from a bank always forward it to the bank itself to let them know.

I got a few clever ones from paypal and although I didn't for one second fall for them you can understand how some people would. It basically said that it had credited my paypal account by accident by £12.31 and could I pay it back. Because it was such a small amount I'm sure they would have caught quite a few people with it. Be vigilant!
 
I’ve had a few over the past week are so including the ones from the Halifax, Lloyds (without the TSB) and Barclays that make it clear that a response is obligatory. What I don’t understand is why they persist in trying these scams when the Banks issue advice to all account holders about not replying to e-mails asking for account details. I know there will always those that will be caught out by these thieving ********, particularly the vulnerable. But why aren’t these thugs closed down the authorities as soon as they start up.

Excellent post Park………
 
Gayle said:
Yep, and if you ever get one of these scam letters from a bank always forward it to the bank itself to let them know.

ok people gayle has coined it watch word for the month be "V I G I L A N T "
umm on second thoughts make it the rest of our live's .oh and better keep a watch on our friends as well..
Click to expand...
 
its nearly xmas and a lot of people dont keep a vigilant eye on their bank statements,,, they just assume its right
 
One of the problems is that these emails look so genuine, but if you look closely at them, there is always a mistake either in spelling or grammar

example taken from the Barclay's one

[*Important*
We have asked few additional information which is going to be the part of secure login process. These additional information will be asked during your future login security so, please provide all these info completely and correctly otherwise due to security reasons we may have to close your account temporarily.]
 
Doug said:
But why aren’t these thugs closed down the authorities as soon as they start up.
Click to expand...

Because you can run email from any internet connected computer. I could set up a thousand servers a day without any trouble.

The real problem is that most email clients(Outlook being the worst culprit) try to be helpful by hiding the real endpoint of any links in an email. They do this to be 'pretty'. When you hover over a link in an email it should show you the full address. Better stil, only ever use plain text for email. If you bin HTML mail you will never suffer as the full dodgy URL will be displayed for you to see.

Now onto the second 'problem' . Most people(although it is getting less and less every day) use Internet Explorer as their default browser. This has critical bugs that allow the spammers to even hide a real address in the browser bar such that you would believe that you were on the correct site . You click a pretty link in an email and it appears in your browser looking just as you would expect. Non techical people would not be to blame for thinking they were on the correct site and will often put details in.

The moral? Consider using a better(i.e. more secure) browser and only read(and send!) email in plain text.

Ian
 
Grammatical or spelling mistakes don't always prove that something is fake.

I had a letter (of the postal variety) from my bank a few months ago asking me to contact them: "re regarding your account". When I pointed out to them that "re regarding" didn't actually make sense the reply I got was "oh it's a preprinted letter we just type in what it's about." So if "re" is already there then they should have enough sense not to type in "regarding"! If both are preprinted then I suggest they need to re-program the pre-printed letters.

The bit which frustrated me most was that the dopey looking bank clerk didn't seem to understand what was wrong with the way it was worded. She thought I was objecting to the abbreviation "re"!

As for the phishing scams. There must be many people who fall for them otherwise they wouldn't keep doing it. The more these things are brought to people's attention the better. I haven't had any for a while, but having said that I'll probably get loads now.
 
park381 said:
Have just received an email from the Halifax or so it would seem, the email asked me to update my online banking details, not having any accounts with the Halifax I phoned their help line, it is not one of ours, please forward the email to our investigations team.
So Accy webbers if you have an account with the Halifax and you get the same email.......delete it. Have attached a scan of the email for information.
Click to expand...
none of the banks will not ask for your details on the internet they will write to you so if any one gets on just delet it
 
Funny thing, I haven't used my paypal account for a few months and so the emails had stopped. But, I have just had a couple of genuine payments in to my paypal account from ebay and the funny emails have started up again. They're obviously on the watch for activity on paypal accounts.

Another way to tell if they're fake or not - use your mouse and highlight any words at the bottom of the email that are 'invisible' they use them to circumnavigate the junk mail checker thingymijig.
 
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