Strange coincidences and attempted scams

RetSol

.... I received an sms this afternoon from HSBC confirming that my switch application has been accepted.  I am sure that the message is genuine as I applied for a switch the other day.

An hour later, I received another sms, apparently from HSBC, informing me that someone had tried to access my account from another device and inviting me to click on a link in the sms if it was not me. 

Coincidence?

The phone identified the message as possible spam and I reported it as such. 

I have checked the account and it is in order.

This reminds me of a similar incident last year when I changed the DD details for my TV licence online and, on the eve of the first new DD going out, I received an email telling me that the DD had been refused, that my licence would be cancelled the following day and inviting me to click on a link.

Again, coincidence?

There was of course no problem with the DD.

Anyone having similar experiences or can explain how this sort of thing happens? 

kuratowski

Yes it is a coincidence.  People with UK numbers will obviously be targeted with for common UK "brands" - HMRC, TV Licence, HSBC, Lloyds, Vodafone, etc.  I have received loads of these annoying texts in the past month or two.
Your phone number may have been leaked in one of the "big" data breaches (e.g. facebook, etc).  Mine was

colsten

Agree, complete co-incidence. The fraudsters posing as HSBC are particularly canny though, so well done for spotting the scam and reporting them. 

ThisnotThat

They'll send these text to potentially tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people.  Chances are pretty high that one or two of the recipients will bank with whoever the scam is purporting to be from and have initiated a switch that day or very recently.

jay1804

The HSBC fraud text's seem to be more targeted as when I set up my online banking on 4th received a text the next day saying "HSBC: A New Payee request was created from an unrecognised device. You can Authorise or Cancel this request via: (Link)", however it came from a mobile number and I didn't set up any payees. So i just ignored it.

quirkydeptless

It would be strange if co-incidences didn't happen.

If scammers try enough people, eventually they might get lucky and their phishing attempt co-incides with an event that makes it more plausible.

It's a numbers game. Lots, and lots of numbers!

RetSol

It would be strange if co-incidences didn't happen.

What I find odd is that I received two or three phishing emails from "TV Licensing" within a couple of days but nothing before or since. 

colsten

RetSol said:

It would be strange if co-incidences didn't happen.

What I find odd is that I received two or three phishing emails from "TV Licensing" within a couple of days but nothing before or since. 

You are free to believe there is a connection, even if there isn't one. The main thing is that you keep reporting phishing emails to your email provider, spam texts to 7726, and continue to not click on any links.

oldagetraveller1

""HSBC: A New Payee request was created from an unrecognised device. You can Authorise or Cancel this request via: (Link)"

Received similar recently. Differed slightly by there being a named payee, C. Jones, and a regular payment set up, £230.

An obvious scam, to most, although I don't have a HSBC account!

[Deleted User]

They send them out all the time, my work mobile number gets regular ones about HSBC and post office details warning me about my account being at risk. On Android you can flag them as spam very easily, iphone doesn't have an obvious option to do this (I'm sure there is one, done in some convoluted way that only makes sense to Apple such as the way you clear Safari browser cache via the iphone settings menu rather than the browser but I haven't spotted it yet).

armith

Hey, this self-same thing happening to me as well makes it another co-incidence! I transferred to the Halifax and got the same message straight away afterwards. I didn't actually think anything of it - I thought it might be something to do with setting up my new account. So I just logged onto my account in the normal way and checked everything was OK (I'd never click a text message link!). All was good - so scammers might have done me a favour in getting me to check everything was OK with my new account.

If only there was some way of sending a "thank-you" to a scammer