Halifax Online Banking Security Advice

Thursday 2 August 2007

Advice on online banking security, scam emails and phishing, taken from

http://www.halifax.co.uk/SecurityandPrivacy/phishing.asp

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Phishing

Phishing emails look like they’re from your bank and usually ask you to log into your online service to confirm your personal details and security information.

When you click the link in the email, you are taken to a ‘spoof’ site which looks like your bank’s online service, but in fact has been set up by the person who sent the email. They hope that you will be fooled into giving away your confidential details.

Halifax would never ask you to confirm your sign in details in this way. The sender of the phishing email does not know you are a Halifax online banking customer. They send emails to a huge number of addresses, knowing that some of the recipients will be Halifax customers.

So how did they get hold of your email address? It will probably have been intercepted, or sold on, when you provided it over the internet for legitimate reasons. Halifax would never pass on your details to anyone else.

What to do if you receive a phishing email

  • Don’t follow any links in the email, or reply to it
  • Forward the email to onlineemailinvestigations@hbosplc.com replacing the subject line with ‘Report’
  • Delete the suspicious email