Halifax E-mail scam

Be_Happy

Got my first bank e-mail scam today. Luckily I didn't have an account with the Halifax and knew about these false bank e-mails.

BUT it looked absolutely convincing - one small grammar mistake, but not easily spotted. All logos etc convincing. It asked me to click on a link to verify my account details ready for an update of the website. Warned that if I didn't my account would be closed.

Anyway, be warned because as I said this looks absolutely genuine. I phoned Halifax who confirmed this was scam. They said that thousands of the e-mails would have been sent out at random and the sender would get a pay-off from any Halifax customer who did respond.

courtjester

Be careful not to click on any link in these emails - the link displayed may look genuine, but the underlying URL generally directs to an entirely different page altogether - these can be used to run scripts or download software or circumvent your firewall protection (because you could be unwittingly authorising access).

No bank will ever send emails asking for passwords or for you to log in and 'confirm' your registration details.

A little common sense and care is all that is required to avoid coming unstuck with these - make sure you log them in your spam folder to disregard future mails.

rogue_element

A good piece of advice is to try firefox browser (mozilla.com). Its phishing protection is better than ie7. You can also get plugins for both firefox and IE such as siteadvisor (siteadvisor.com) or phishtank (phishtank.com) which warn you if you click onto a phising page!

I got one similar to that, but i do have a halifax account, it looks v.similar to the halifax, even has a similar address halifax-secure.com I think, but I checked it out with domaindossier and dnsreport (google for them - u can automate checks with these these with showip plugin for firefox). Also it was not sent to the correct address on my domain, mine is rather obvious i.e. the name of the bank @mydomain.co.uk.. so it cannot be long before someone thinks of that!

That particular site is now shut down...