Fake Banking Text Messages

Which? show how easy it is to send fake text messages ‘from your bank’

A recent Which? shoes how easy it is to fake text messages as being from your bank or credit card company. In the report the journalist along with ‘ethical hacker’ Scott Mcgready are able to create and send convincing fake emails that show up alongside genuine text messages from a bank.

Online Services

While the Which report used a customised server to send the fake text messages, there are a plethora of online services that allow you to do exactly the same, some for free.

A number of victims of this type of fraud have already been in contact explaining that they believed the texts to be genuine and followed the link in the message, or called the number and subsequently had money transferred out of their accounts by the fraudsters.

Read the Which? report here: Which? Report

There is not much you can do at the moment to prevent receiving one of these fake text messages, and there’s no way of identifying if the sender is genuine, so the advice is to treat ALL such text messages as potentially fake. If the fraudsters have gained access to your address book they could easily fake a text from a contact asking for similar details, you should check the authenticity of all text messages before responding to them.

#WeCanHelp

Here are a few tips to help you when dealing with potentially fake emails:

• Never assume a text from a company is genuine. Even if it’s in a previously legitimate thread, it could still be a scam.
• Don’t click on any links or call any numbers contained within a text message – look up the organisation’s details independently and contact it to verify the message.
• A genuine bank will never contact you asking for your PIN, full password, or to move money to a safe account.
• Avoid giving out your number on publicly available websites or social media profiles.
• Don’t respond to or text ‘STOP’ to a message if you’re not sure it’s genuine; if it’s a scam, doing so could confirm to the fraudster(s) that your line is ‘live’.
• Spam and suspicious texts can be reported to your network by forwarding them to 7726 and to the regulator by filling in a form at ico.org.uk.
• If you’re conned out of money or tricked into giving away your personal details, contact your bank immediately and report it to Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk.
• If you’re scammed, you may not get your money back – the rules on this are complex.

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