Phishing - don't be a victim

If you have an online bank account, you may already have heard of phishing. It's a method used by fraudsters to bypass online banking security by illegally obtaining your personal information directly from you, then using it against you. If you do any sort of online banking you have to be very careful to not fall victim to it.

The attempt to trick you usually comes as an email pretending to be from your bank asking you to click on a link that takes you to a web page designed to look like part of your bank's website. That page asks you for your personal information and, as soon as you enter it, you put your personal details straight into the hands of the fraudsters. The scary thing is that people do sometimes fall for it, so it's worth getting to know a little bit about it - and you don't need to know much - to make sure that you and your bank account don't become the next phishing victims.

Your bank will have ways of ensuring that their communication with you can be verified as genuine - for example, most email communications from Halifax or Bank of Scotland will include part of the customer's postcode or part of their account number to provide reassurance that they are from who they say they are. If you receive any form of communication from your bank that you aren't sure about or aren't expecting you should let your bank know immediately. The chances are they'll already know about it and they'll have taken steps to combat it, but if they haven't, you may save hundreds of potential victims' bank accounts from attack from one of the most common types of online banking fraud.

If you want to know more about what the Halifax and Bank of Scotland are doing about online security you can read about it on a page about staying secure online on their website.

Internet banking security is something that you have to take very seriously if you use online banking in any way but, as long as you take all the necessary precautions, there is really nothing to worry about at all. As long as you have the latest anti-virus and firewall software installed it's very difficult indeed for criminals to hack into your computer which is why phishing, which doesn't rely on getting into a computer, caught on as the new favoured method of criminals. So as long as you are aware of how to spot fraudulent emails you should have no problems at all.