Con Email? HSBC account suspended.

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Andy in Sig

Vice President in Exile
An email with the title "HSBC Notification of Suspension" (or similar) has been sent to me about four times now. As I have no connections whatsoever to HSBC I have just deleted it unread on the assumption that it contains some sort of dodgy software or that it is a con trick. Has anybody heard of this one?
 

Steve Austin

The Marmalade Kid
Location
Mlehworld
Yep. I get this same email about 4 times a day, from various different addresses. DON'T click any of the links, but if you hover the cursor over the link, you'll see the link in the bottom left corner of your browser and the link is not HSBC

Its a phishing scam
 

jay clock

Massive member
Location
Hampshire UK
i have my own domain name, and get dozens of these for banks I am not with around the world. Ignore and delete and do not click any links.
 

Ian H

Ancient randonneur
For variety they use different bank names. Just looked and found Santander and Egg, as well as HSBC, in my spam folder. Modern email clients are often 'trainable' - when you mark a message as Spam, they learn to spot others. But the crooks who send the phishing emails keep trying new techniques to get round them, so a few will always get through.
I did once get a genuine 'account suspended' message, from Paypal. I was very suspicious. I didn't click on the link in the email, but logged in the normal way. They'd noticed I was sending from a different IP address and withheld a payment - irritating, but better than losing money.
 

Davidc

Guru
Location
Somerset UK
Likewise. Between my wife and me we're having accounts suspended/ closed/ investigated at more banks than we knew existed.

The nastiest so far this year had a subject line of "Respond now or a warant will be isued for your arest for fraud".

The lack of any double letters was a bit of a giveaway though.
 
I was getting them daily for a couple of months. Not had any yet this week so I'm hoping I've been given up on.
Gmail is good at putting them straight into the 'spam' folder, with a big red notice in the subject line if you do open it warning it may not be from the sender it purports to be.

edit: Also had some from HMRC promising me a ax refund.

No banks will ever send a link in an email to their site
 
If you want to check your account status always go independently to the bank website and log in. As you have no connections with HSBC I wouldn't worry.
 
OP
OP
Andy in Sig

Andy in Sig

Vice President in Exile
I had no intention of opening them but do find it reassuring that I'm not being specifically targetted. The email came again today and as with all its predecessors, was instantly deleted.
 

longers

Legendary Member
What would happen if you did click on or open one of these phishing emails?
Is it instant virus mayhem or are they after you putting your personal info in to use themselves?
 

ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
longers said:
What would happen if you did click on or open one of these phishing emails?
Is it instant virus mayhem or are they after you putting your personal info in to use themselves?
They often lead you to a clone of the official website. It would look exactly like the real thing but when you try to log in, the crooks harvest your login details and then have access to your account!

You'd probably then see some sort of fake error message like "Sorry, you could not be logged in to your account. The webserver is down for maintenance - please try again in 2 hours time." During that 2 hour interval, of course, they'd already have done whatever dodgy deals they get up to...
 
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