HSBC Bank Spoofed Phishing E-mails Detected, Caution Specialists

According to security researchers, cyber-criminals are running phishing scams against London, United Kingdom headquartered HSBC Bank customers to steal their online banking credentials, reported softpedia.com in news on August 19, 2014.

The researchers examined one of the phishing electronic mails and figured out that Tehran, Iran was the hosting region of the associated phishing site.

Displaying a title, "Your Account is Innactive" and addressing recipients as "Dear Customer," the fraudulent e-mail tells that the bank has observed the recipient's account as not being used over the last few days. For protecting the account, the bank has labeled it 'dormant,' meaning the user can't anymore access his HSBC account till the time he reactivates it. For that he requires clicking on a given link named Reinstate Code so he can view inside his Web-browser where specified, the e-mail ends.

The e-mail's message body then follows to one lengthy code number below it which the user is supposed to hit.

But, the site to which the link points to is totally false as it essentially mimics the true HSBC Bank website. Notably, there are a couple of clues that indicate the scammy nature of the e-mail. First, the kind of connection wherein the customer's details are sent to the bank's online system is in an unsafe way. Second, the spelling of the word 'Inactive' has been wrongly given as "Innactive."

Usually, phishing websites remain live for only some hours, still online miscreants manage in victimizing many people; besides, they create fresh URLs for keeping on with their sinister operations, state the researchers.

They further state banks similar as HSBC are quite unlikely to ask clients for making inactive bank accounts once again active by following a web-link pointing to a code dispatched through e-mail. More importantly, banks use the actual name of their clients when addressing them rather than use the salutation "Dear Customer" like it has been done within the aforementioned instance.

Therefore, in case anyone gets the above kind of e-mail claiming to be from HSBC he should destroy it and never open it, suggest specialists along with HSBC officials.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/27/2014