OMG Bank of Scotland Fake Website!! Money stolen. Has anyone heard of this?

moni72

Someone in my family seems to have been the victim of an internet fraud but do the bank even know about it?

Has anyone heard of this???

Type https://www.bankofscotland.co.uk and you go to the bank's proper website.

Type https://www.bankofscotlandf.co.uk or https://www.vankofscotland.co.uk or any variation you like close to this and it routes you to the following

http://bankscotlanduk.com/index.php?id=welcome

Now this looks almost exactly like the real Bank of Scotland website. If you try and click on a few links it doesn't take you anywhere which I suppose should make you suspicious but if you hit the login link it takes you to the login page which looks like the real one too.

Anyway, my family member typed in their login details and it came back and asked some additional security questions (eg mother's maiden name, dob etc) which were answered because recently another bank had asked for those questions genuinely. Once again, even when one knows that this goes on, the scammers have a way of lulling you into a false sense of security to give out these details.

The really worrying and bizarre thing is that it then showed my family member their bank account! How's that?? A few things were checked and she even printed off a bank statement! She exited the bank account. She was slightly concerned and looked again later to find that £5081.39 (or thereabouts) had been debited from her account which she didn't process and no-one else had access to the account.

She phoned the Bank of Scotland and has been given the runaround for 4 days. Finally today they said it's with the fraud dept and will take 7-10 days to investigate. The Bank have been very unhelpful. She doesn't know what's happening, why it's happened meantime £5k of her money has disappeared into the ether.

Has anyone heard of this and how come the bank aren't extremely concerned about people being re-directed to a completely fake and bogus website masquarading as HBOS??

Any thoughts or help would be much appreciated.

RichardJohn_2

It's a standard phishing scam, I'm not sure why you're so surprised!

Kilty_2

Someone might want to email both eNom (the registrar used to register both of those .co.uk domains) and Nominet to try and get them suspended.

RichardJohn_2

She should count herself lucky if she gets the money back. If you're not net-savvy enough to spot a phishing site, you shouldn't be using internet banking, or at the very least you should be using a browser that warns against them (Firefox, IE7, or using OpenDNS).

moni72

Thanks Richard, you're a big help! NOT.

I'm surprised because I hadn't ever heard of scammers using fake websites in this way ie masquarading as the bank when you type a wrong character. None of the other banks seem to have this type of con going on and I've never seen or heard any publicity about it. I'd like to know why the banks aren't warning people if it's so common. And why in particular the Bank of Scotland aren't warning their customers! The emails phishing scam certainly lots of people know about as it's hugely publicised and applies to just about every bank but this is not.

Incidentally, even though there's masses of publicity about email phishing people still get conned that way so in any case I think your reply is just a tad insensitive.

System

Why on earth haven't BOS had the fake site taken down??

moni72

Well I'm sorry we're not all as clever as you!

This site and particularly this forum is supposed to help people and support individuals at all levels of knowledge/education and not to be arrogant and condescending towards one another.

It is principally a consumer revenge site designed specifically to educate people and information share. Basically what you are saying is that anyone who falls victim to any sort of fraud it's their own fault for not knowing any better!

Please take your advice elsewhere as it is extremely upsetting. At 34 years old I might not personally have fallen victim to this but my family member is 60 years old.

You really are an unpleasant individual.

moni72

Kilty wrote: »

Someone might want to email both eNom (the registrar used to register both of those .co.uk domains) and Nominet to try and get them suspended.

Thanks Kilty. I'll try that.

moni72

UNDERGROUND wrote: »

Why on earth haven't BOS had the fake site taken down??

That was the first thing that crossed my mind but then I wasn't sure whether you could do that or not?

Certainly if you can close a website down I can't understand why BOS haven't done so either!!

Mikeyorks

moni72 wrote: »

.....The emails phishing scam certainly lots of people know about as it's hugely publicised and applies to just about every bank but this is not.

Incidentally, even though there's masses of publicity about email phishing people still get conned that way so in any case I think your reply is just a tad insensitive.

So where do you think the links in the phishing Emails direct you to? Something that says 'Imafakesite.com'? I think not. They direct you to a site that looks like / smells like / sounds like .... the site they intend you to think you're visiting.

One of your relatives has just accessed it directly .... then input all the details it needed. Can't explain how it could show the full Bank account details ..... that sounds a bit far fetched. Are you sure they hadn't logged into the correct one by then.

System

I have to say that the fake sites are very convincing.

The very best way to tell if a banking site is genuine is to check for the padlock symbol in your web browser, also the prefix 'https' before the website address.

I also did a bit of research on the websites registrant - it's someone grotty little scammer in Namibia.

I also agree that some of the comments in this thread are unhelpful and rude, this seems to be happening more and more on these forums which is a real shame.

I hope that family member sorts out their problem and get them to check for the padlock sign whenever signing in to financial sites.

Regards
UNDERGROUND