Abbey National - How quickly fraudsters take advantage

[HowardD]

Like hundreds of thousands of Abbey account holders, I'm affected by this problem.

BBC News - Abbey accounts affected by error

After reading about it this morning, I got an email this afternoon, telling me there's a system problem and that I need to logon and reenter my acount details.

I nearly clicked the linky before the alarm went off in my head.

On reflection, it's clearly a phishing scam, but it's amazing how quickly the scammers have taken advantage of Abbey's problems. And, I wonder if people might be more likely to get taken in by this, knowing that Abbey has got a problem, than if they received the phishing email cold.

Would it be too much of a conspiracy theory to think that a scenario could be engineered, where a bank employee creates a technical problem at the time of year where shopping patterns are unpredictable, when employees are being paid and when the bank's resource is more scarce because of holidays and bad weather.

And, in the resulting confusion, the bank allows all payments, even those exceeding overdraft limits, and overrides whatever security protocols they have in place to monitor unusual transactions.

One phishing email goes out, victims give over their details and big sums (or lots of small sums) disappear.

HD

 

[Michael G]

Like you I'm an Abbey customer, I got the E mail too but thought there was something a bit dodgey about it so didn't open the link.
I think its probably some old employee with a grudge or a bored 30 year old hacker living with his mum.

 

[mirras]

Like you I'm an Abbey customer, I got the E mail too but thought there was something a bit dodgey about it so didn't open the link.
I think its probably some old employee with a grudge or a bored 30 year old hacker living with his mum.

Or a result of the activities to integrate the various systems over to the Santander brand before the new year cutover?

 

[Michael G]

Or a result of the activities to integrate the various systems over to the Santander brand before the new year cutover?

Is that next year.
I thought it wasn't happening until 2011.

 

[Stratman]

If you receive an email (or telephone call) purporting to come from your bank, asking for your login details


IT'S A SCAM

 

[oldcro]

I've had lots of these usually addressed to "Dear Valued Customer", mostly from banks I have never dealt with. Obviously all genuine as not having banked with them before qualifies me as a valued customer.

 

[mirras]

Is that next year.
I thought it wasn't happening until 2011.

January 11th 2010 I heard.

 

[Rory]

On reflection, it's clearly a phishing scam, but it's amazing how quickly the scammers have taken advantage of Abbey's problems.

As others have said, I get these in my junk mail folder almost every day, Abbey is probably one of the more common ones. Been getting them for years.

 

[stevesey]

I had a good one today for lloyds - caught my eye becuase the email address they used was actually a corruption of the internet bank domain name for the internet bank that I'm working on.

Have seen some good ones in my time - particularly like the ones that pull the live images off off the real bank web servers - easily done:

So they look very authentic - I've seen ones where the real images change every day and the ones it was picking up the day I had a look were actually the warnings against phishing scams.

We were only having the discussion the other day about following these links and entering bogus details. If we all did this on mass, the fraudsters would be swamped with useless info - I've a suspicion some banks do this anywhy while going through the steps to get the phishing site taken down.

 

[Noodle-Pulp]

Ifollowing these links and entering bogus details. If we all did this on mass, the fraudsters would be swamped with useless info

In 1998 I led a one man mission to do exactly this but I ended up getting even more spam and phishing emails.. trust me it's not a path anyone should follow...in the end I deleted all email addresses and started my internet life over

 

[stevesey]

In 1998 I led a one man mission to do exactly this but I ended up getting even more spam and phishing emails.. trust me it's not a path anyone should follow...in the end I deleted all email addresses and started my internet life over

"One man" would hardly be significant - but if they suddently get 100,000 bogus online banking username/passwords for every one valid one...

Also of course you need to take precautions.

 

[Shude]

I've said it before on this forum but I declined to give any of the financial institutions I deal with my e-mail address so I can guarantee 100% that anything claiming to be from the bank is in fact a lie.

 

[kay7]

Like hundreds of thousands of Abbey account holders, I'm affected by this problem.

BBC News - Abbey accounts affected by error

After reading about it this morning, I got an email this afternoon, telling me there's a system problem and that I need to logon and reenter my acount details.

I nearly clicked the linky before the alarm went off in my head.

On reflection, it's clearly a phishing scam, but it's amazing how quickly the scammers have taken advantage of Abbey's problems. And, I wonder if people might be more likely to get taken in by this, knowing that Abbey has got a problem, than if they received the phishing email cold.

Would it be too much of a conspiracy theory to think that a scenario could be engineered, where a bank employee creates a technical problem at the time of year where shopping patterns are unpredictable, when employees are being paid and when the bank's resource is more scarce because of holidays and bad weather.

And, in the resulting confusion, the bank allows all payments, even those exceeding overdraft limits, and overrides whatever security protocols they have in place to monitor unusual transactions.

One phishing email goes out, victims give over their details and big sums (or lots of small sums) disappear.

HD

I dont think Abbey is a bank ...jokers like Barclays ... HSBC best bank ever !