I just received the following email from HSBC, only read carefully, because it’s not from them at all. It’s another one of those awful phising emails, but I love the really poor grammar which makes it obvious.
Please note that our system recently noted that your attemption of signing on to your account was failed while some errors occurred during the processing update of your online account you are having with our bank.
We sincerely hereby to notify you that you should kindly follow below link to Login to your online account for your security safety ensured by our financial institution.
https://www.hsbc.co.uk
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security measure meant to help protect you and your account.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
If you choose to ignore our request, your account may leads to be temporarily suspended.
Naturally the link that appears to go HSBC doesn’t, it goes to an IP address that is a copy of their site. If you have the Netcraft toolbar installed on your Firefox it will jump in at this point and stop you, like this:
If however you use something a little less secure you may well find yourself giving the scamming bastards your bank login details.
The moral here, use Firefox, install the Netcraft toolbar and if your ‘official’ banking emails read like they have been written by a Nigerian with only the most basic grasp of English, it’s because they have.
Darren Jamieson, aka MrDaz, is the Technical Director and co-founder of Engage Web and has been working online in a career spanning two decades. His first website was built in 1998 and is still live today.
