Santander data leak or address book assault ? AKA Direct Debiting Seminar Invite.

username

Anyone else had another wave of spam with a hooky pdf file?

vian22

i had same problem with vodafone... i went to them and they themselves fixed it... maybe you should try to do the same

finbat

Email came in today for Santander@mydomain.co.uk with my surname in the subject.

Contacted Santander - basically they said they would have known if their database had been compromised and that the email address must have been gained another way.

I will wait for the letter from Santander and then contact the ICO.

quaybab

The ICO's position(s) from the various complaints made to it for this identical issue is...

Unique email addresses can be guessed.
Someone else gave it to the spammers.
Santander have likely breached DPA.
Santander are unlikely to have breached DPA.

According to the ICO, they were looking into it via an investigation and an outcome would appear on the enforcement section of their website.
There is nothing so before you complain to the ICO, you'll probably need to ask about the ongoing DPA cases against Santander.
It does prove further that Marketing source Ltd leaked the data as they only ever had email address, Mr/Mrs, initial and family name.

finbat wrote: »

Email came in today for [EMAIL="Santander@mydomain.co.uk"]Santander@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL] with my surname in the subject.

Contacted Santander - basically they said they would have known if their database had been compromised and that the email address must have been gained another way.

I will wait for the letter from Santander and then contact the ICO.

Pound

finbat wrote: »

Email came in today for Santander@mydomain.co.uk with my surname in the subject.

Same here, the email is asking me to reply with a copy of my CV.

lowedb

Just come to this thread, as I have the same issue, twice. My wife and I use separate but unique email addresses for our Santander, EX alliance and leicester accounts. We have new ones that I put in place for Santander some months ago, so the A&L ones are no longer used.

It will be interesting to see the response:

They are easy to guess. Believe me they aren't.
They have been gathered some other way. So how come no others using the same systems and servers have been? How come the two addresses linked to the same institution were targeted at the exact same time, with the same spam / scam email.

The evidence is mounting, and they won't be able to deny it for much longer.

username

I did receive the one above with my surname in, it was a little unnerving tbh.

Has anyone had any non sensical emails sent to them today with 'test message' and then some sort of code in the subject and a load of gibberish in the body - googling the text seems to cite the varios sources from the internet?

ScarboroughPeel

We got 2 "Test" emails today at the same time to 2 different email accounts, both of which are used for Santander accounts, one is unique to Santander and has never been used elsewhere which is why I believe Santander have leaked this. This is why I did a search and came across this thread. Something is gravely wrong here. The 2 emails would be very difficult to guess at the same time.

alanwsg

I received a couple of the "Test" Emails today, they were sent to an address I used when I had an account with Alliance & Leicester. Didn't they get bought by Santander?

I do have a Santander account but I gave them a different address.

MrA2012

I got a few of those weird test emails on my created for Santander and only given to Santander email address back in November, but then it all went quiet. Today that same address has been bombarded with fake payroll and invoice emails ("NUCSOFT-Payroll December 2014" from "Eliza Fernandes" and "Invoice 3235.21 GBP" from "Bobbi Dale").

Does anyone know if Santander themselves ever actually send emails to customers? I don't remember them ever sending me one. I'd like to blackhole this address to stop the spam as it's never used for anything else, but I wouldn't want to miss something important.