'Barclays online banking' scam

kazzy

Ria wrote:

jockettuk
That has been my experience too unfortunately. I wish I could stop spam as I have just started getting endless emails from dodgy pharmceutical companies with lewd offerings...... Is there really nothing that can be done

I would also be very grateful if someone could advise on how to get rid of these emails offering these 'pills'

ManAtHome

Some useful info here http://www.sitedeveloper.ws/tutorials/spam.htm - basically you set up a list of offending (or offensive) words and/or addresses and can delete emails or route them to a SPAM folder. I have the usual suspects - Viagra, Cialis, Drugs etc (etc being the ones I won't list here!). I've found that dumping anything from verizon.net and yahoo.com/co.uk gets rid of quite a lot...

irnbru_2

MarkyMarkD wrote:

As it is, most banks very rarely e-mail their customers in my experience - Egg e-mail me monthly to tell me when my card statement is online; A&L e-mail me monthly to tell me when my current account statement is online. All my other cards/savings accounts don't e-mail at all.

Do they include a URL to their site?

I know Smile email when a statement is ready. However, this is a plain text message with a URL pointing to the homepage.

For the OP, Barclays do give warnings on their website and in fact changed their login system to reduce the likelihood of any security details being sniffed by keystroke loggers.

MarkyMarkD

I hadn't looked at the e-mails in enough detail to be able to answer irnbru's question, and found it interesting when I did. Some of the banks really don't do enough, sending e-mails which are virtually identical to those a spammer could send (or indeed have sent).

See this genuine one, from American Express:

Dear Cardmember,

Your latest online Card Account statement is now ready to view at https://www.americanexpress.co.uk/myaccount . Please log in to review and settle this statement at your earliest convenience.

Please refer to the amount due and payment due date shown on your online statement to ensure that settlement of your Card Account reaches us in time. To find out more about how you can pay your Card Account statement please refer to our FAQs at https://www.americanexpress.co.uk/customerservice .

Thank you for using American Express Online Services.

Note: We cannot respond to any enquiries sent to this mailbox.

PS: Once you've viewed your statement, don't forget to visit https://www.americanexpress.co.uk/offers for exclusive Cardmember offers or, if you're enrolled for Membership Rewards®, visit https://www.americanexpress.co.uk/membershiprewards to keep up to date with all the latest ways to earn and redeem points.

and this one from Egg:

Hello - your statement's arrived. So, go and take a look, it's there to keep you in the know by detailing your transactions. Please remember to always keep your receipts safe, check them off against your statement and dispose of them carefully. If you spot a transaction that you don't recognise you can get help from the link on your statement, if anything still seems wrong contact us straight away.

When you're taking a look at your statement, you can also check out your PIN, with our online PIN browser. Just select 'View PIN' from the right hand side of the 'Your money' page. Remember, you can always change your PIN at most VISA branded ATMs to something more memorable if you like.

Also, just to let you know, we're making a small change to our statement notification e-mails. From 1 November onwards, the subject line you'll see in your inbox will be 'Your Egg Card statement is ready'.

Neither of them is personally addressed, which is a classic sign of a scam e-mail. "Dear Cardholder" at the start of the AMEX one is completely inexcusable. Do they not know how to do a mail merge or something?

Compare that to this one from A&L:

Dear Mrs MarkyMarkD.

View your latest monthly account transactions (up to 228 days), including any credit interest you may have earned, on your Premier Plus Current Account and PlusSaver Account through the Alliance & Leicester Internet Banking service.

Remember, you will not receive a separate bank statement in the post.

These transaction details are only available online.

Relatively speaking, this is a perfect bank e-mail. It is personally addressed (good) and it does NOT contain any link to the website (far better). It might be less convenient for the customer, but it's far safer that they have to find the A&L site themselves (or use their Favourites) and then log into internet banking via that route.

I shall contact Egg and suggest that they change to the A&L approach - they normally at least seem to listen when you make suggestions and reply to e-mails quite efficiently.