santander account - junk mail

charlotte99

I set up a Santander online easy access account and within one day got a scam junk mail saying a large amount had been piad into my account and I should logon and check it. Obviously I didn't but it just felt odd that I'd had this email just a day after setting up the account. Should I be worried ?...feels like someone is selling the email adresses.

jimjames

Millions of these emails are sent out every day. Just like the lottery it is possible that one may be match you. In this case it happened to be the day after you opened an account but if you hadn't opened the account you wouldn't have thought any more about it.

oldagetraveller

I'm with Charlotte in that it's possibly too much of a coincidence.
I opened a Santander Esaver recently and there's no option but to provide your mobile 'phone number during the application.
Within a couple of hours I was receiving all sorts of "junk" to my 'phone, including from Santander in spite of definitely opting out of any contact by them or others. NEVER received any previously and only trusted persons had my number prior to Santander.
However, as jimjames says it is a lottery re junk e-mails, I receive them regularly! In fact Natwest wanted me to log in this morning - strange, I don't have an account with them.

charlotte99

Maybe it is a coincidence, I also get many of these some from banks I have an account with some not but it just feels toooo coincidental.

justtryingtogetby

Have you ever had an account with them before?

I used to have an account with them, closed it down, couple of years started getting that email saying log in and check.

I then went into Santander to ask if I still had an account, they said no, and to ignore the email as it was Spam and not from them.

The timing of when it happens with you is a bit odd to say the least...

dunstonh

In the space of a typical week you will find spam filters catching them to every bank going. Its just pot luck. Most scams work that way. Nothing to do with Santander.

You can spot the fakes a mile away (assuming they get through your spam filter). Usually poor grammar. Frequently use American spelling. Not personalised to you. Any images linked in the email are from the website. Not signed off by a person but a hypothetical department. Compliance messages missing (the small print at the bottom) or made up jargon that does not apply to the UK. The link in the email doesnt go to the site (it may show a name that appears that it does but when you hover above the link, most email clients will give you the real link you are sent to and scams will not be using the real domain.

Banks never ask you to click on a link to login. Read the email again and see if it has any of the errors mentioned above.

charlotte99

No never had a Santander account but theregain I get coop ones, nat west ones etc and never had one of them either. I'd never reply to any of these and didn't read it closely...it's just the timing felt odd.

jamesd

Never click on a link in such an email. It'll take you to a bogus site if it's not genuine and those sites are quite likely to try to get your browser to accept harmful content by exploiting security vulnerabilities in it. Even going to the site is risky for this reason.

I use a different email account for every company I do business with. these emails never arrive on the accounts given to the banks, but instead to others from say blogs or mailing lists. If you use different accounts it's really easy to know it's bogus because it's to the wrong account, not the one you gave to the bank.

If creating lots of accounts is too much work, try three:

1. Guaranteed genuine key financial accounts you use, like your bank and investment company.
2. Other businesses.
3. Public lists, blogs and such. This one will be spammed like crazy.

It's easy to do this with services like gmail and mail clients like say Thunderbird that support lots of different accounts.

At the moment I have 513 different email addresses. 197,488 emails that are junk sent to accounts I've disabled and 9,500 or so emails that got through to me. This over 11 years of doing things this way.

The most spammed addresses:

115,000 emails to one from a pharmacy company I used to post ads on a site for
20,700 emails to one from a bug reporting site using bugzilla
16,200 emails to one harvested from a single mention in a html-based blog
15,400 emails to one harvested from a blogging account
8700 emails to one harvested from a blogging account
8300 emails to two harvested from posts to a blog
6400 emails to one harvested from posts to a blog

The last spammed addresses:

Those supplied to legitimate businesses. It's rare for legitimate businesses to send spam. They know it annoys customers so they tend not to do it. And I'd know, since every one I deal with has a different email address so I know the moment it happens...

jimjames

I've just checked my spam box today. So far I've had:

2 emails from Halifax
2 from Lloyds
1 from Paypal
3 from HMRC offering me a tax refund
1 from Cahoot

Hundreds offering medications

I have an account with Cahoot but its not from a real address.

I also use a similar method. If you have your own domain you can get all mail sent to that domain regardless of the address so I might use:

lloydsbank@mydomain.co.uk
ebay@mydomain.co.uk
paypal@mydomain.co.uk
sainsburys@mydomain.co.uk

etc etc so I can tell exactly where an email address has been used and if it is from the genuine company. All get delivered to my normal mailbox so it doesn't create any extra hassle.

scott_lithgows

Bank with the small banks and building societies and you dont get any you might mistake for genune!