The Lost Knowledge Blog for Web Design

Todays spam email warning is for one of the major banks HSBC. Now a lot of banks have this problem, so if you get an email from a bank that isn’t yours obviously ignore it, but if you get one for your own bank then really think about what it’s asking or telling you.

If it requires you to log into your account don’t ever click on the link in the email, go direct to the website in a browser using the proper address, then log in. If there is a problem most banks should tell you once you’ve logged in, if not you will very likely recieve a letter in the post, unless you’ve selected to only get digital letters. Even still with digital letters they should be accessible from the logged in account.

If there is an attachment to the email I think I can safely say completely ignore it everytime a bank won’t send any attachments, if however you know of a bank that does please leave a comment on this post and put in it what the file is and potentially why. This will help anyone who questions if it’s safe or not to open, thanks.

So on to the HSBC email, this one has graphics so I’ve had to take screenshots for it.

Here is an image when the email is caught in a spam filter. You will notice first the massive list of different emails, the bank would not send an email with this showing as that would be a Data Protection violation. Now you’ll notice a couple of crosses on the image, this is where images would be, but due to my spam filer it doesn’t show images by default. This can be important because if you download images the spam guys know you’re looking at the meail and will add you to further lists, so avoid this as much as possible.

Again as in other warning they don’t mention your actual name on the email it’s a generic ‘Dear Customer’ greeting, this is a good sign it’s spam.

So most spam email usally have a really bad quality logo and the email looks nothing like a real email from them. Now I don’t have a HSBC account so someone else will need to comment on whether this is accurate or not, but in the image below if this came in it would look pretty convincing to most people. Also I looked into the code and they are actually using images from the real website www.hsbc.com so it’s a good bet that it is how the real emails look.

Ok so the final and best way to tell if this is actually a spam email is to hover on the login button to see what the actual link says that it’s going to. In this case it has the followin:

http://www.hsbc.co.uk.8njxvdic.com/1/2/HSBCINTEGRATION_CAM20/00500G5SSYZI16sRkSJyjt2ntf4ep3IDV_URL/index.php

Now I’ve deleted a few things from this link just in case anyone thought to copy and paste it into a browser (please don’t).

If you break it down you will see that the real domain address isn’t right as it has http://www.hsbc.co.uk.8njxvdic.com everything after that doesn’t matter so much as some real links from genuine banks may have things similar in style. The important thing to note is that the real address should be http://www.hsbc.co.uk (or .com) that one has an extra set of letters and numbers to it before the .com ’8njxvdic’ so this means that it’s a fake address.

There are many spam emails that follow a lot of the tricks employed in this one spam email so take note and keep an eye out before you click on anything.

Stay Safe

Alan Fair

This is one of the other common spam emails that isn’t your typical badly done ones. This is for a parcel from DHL

This one comes with an attachment called ‘DHL_Label_2a761.zip’ do not ever open attachments unless you know who it’s from and you have eliminated that it is a spam email.

In this case it can be very difficult to tell if it’s a real one or not. Similar to Paypal, companies like this will genereally use your real name, the one on the account or a reference number that you should be able to check from a previous email or letter. Make sure you confirm that first.

You need to also think about are you actually waiting on a parcel and what company is delivering it.

They wouldn’t likely say that the cause is an error with the shipping address they would by standard either leave a card or attempt to deliver it the next day. If they don’t suceed then they would send the card in the post.

If it was sent by someone else then the company would get in touch with them that the address was wrong and wouldn’t use your email address in that instance.

You always need to bring some form of identification with you to get a parcel this doesn’t ask you to do that, so that’s a bit suspicious.

Also emails from the company would usually have actual branding, so you would see the logo somewhere on there, this one just doesn’t have that.

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Hello!

The courier company was not able to deliver your parcel by your address.

Cause: Error in shipping address.

You may pickup the parcel at our post office personaly!

Please note!

The shipping label is attached to this e-mail.

Please print this label to get this package at our post office.

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Stay Safe

Alan Fair

This spam email is one targetted at people with a Paypal account.

Again like others a quick hover over the ‘click here’ will show the actual address to be going somewhere completely different from where you would expect, so be careful and don’t click it.

If you get a spam email saying something is time critical or important like the one below always go directly to the main site by typing in the address yourself, and then login to see if there is a note, email or letter in your account settings kind of area. This is good practice especially for any emails talking about your bank account.

Another thing with Paypal is that they will use the actual name on your account for any official emails, so it saying ‘Dear Customer’ tells me right away it’s a spam email.

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Dear customer,

Your account has been temporarily limited

Click here to resolve the problem

Thank You.

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Stay Safe

Alan Fair