Phishing emails pretend to be from a genuine company and usually claim that it is necessary for a customer to ‘update’ or ‘verify’ their customer account information. They often ask customers to click on a link from the email to a website. Although the website may look genuine, it is in fact a bogus website.
Information that victims enter in to this bogus website are captured by fraudsters, who use the information to commit fraud.
Bank Safe Online offers some good advice to help people spot a phishing email. This includes:
- always remember that banks will never contact you by email to ask you to enter your password or any other sensitive information by clicking on a link and visiting a website
- the email address that appears in the ‘from’ field of an email is not a guarantee that the email came from the person or organisation it says it did
- fraudsters are unlikely to know your real name, so the email may address you in vague terms, eg ‘Dear Valued Customer’
- phishing emails will probably contain odd ‘spe11ings’ or ‘cApitALs in the ‘subject’ box and contain spelling or grammatical errors in the email – this is an attempt to get around spam filters and into your inbox.
Read more advice and see useful screenshots to help protect yourself from phishing on Bank Safe Online’s website.
Please note: Action Fraud is not responsible for the content on external websites.
To report a fraud, call Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or use our online fraud reporting tool.
See also:
Online fraud
Vishing
Smishing
